A Touch of Humanity
by Vitalani
Summary: While GLaDOS grapples with her inner demons and some rather unsettling elements of her re-integration with Caroline, Chell is facing up to demons of her own. Five years on from going their seperate ways, their worlds come back together. M for swearing.
1. Prologue: Sweet Dreams

(AN: This is a replacement for the glaring error in my original prologue.)

AN: Well, hello readers! I'm back, with another story that I own none of besides the plot :'( Well, this one has been a long time coming, and my writer's block hasn't helped in the least. I *have* to give credit to Emerald Em for such brilliant support and ideas. Practically my unofficial Beta, but really the person responsible for encouraging me to get this posted :3 And go read Em's stories! Brilliant stuff right there! But no spoilers from me :P

Summary: While GLaDOS grapples with her inner demons and some rather unsettling elements of her re-integration with Caroline, Chell is facing up to demons of her own. Five years on from going their seperate ways, Fate deals them a new hand, bringing their worlds together once more.

~!~

"Can't I just-"

The sharp _bzzt_ of electricity interrupted, cutting off the clipped British voice for a few moments. Then it returned, annoying as ever.

"Love, _please_, gimme one day off!" He got out quickly. Another surge through the thin wires, just enough to prickle at his skin and make the human yelp. Not enough to genuinely hurt him, or cause lasting damage. Unfortunately. But he got the message, and relocated himself from the doorway to the waiting treadmill, being especially careful not to knock off any of the sticky-dots attached variously to his exposed skin, or to break any of the wires connected to the aforementioned sticky-dots.

He was watched through the lenses of several cameras around the room, the feeds all tracing back to one massive databank and the super-powerful AI responsible for them. She chuckled, watching the feeds on three different monitors and reviewing his profile on a fourth.

Name: Flint Wheatley.

Age: 27.

Occupation: Formerly -Aperture Science Computer Programmer. Currently- Aperture Science Test Subject, and the Aperture Science Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System's _plaything_.

Watching the monitors had become a habit, instead of simply examining the camera data GLaDOS had taken to the huge display screens left hanging around after Wheatley's brief stint as Aperture's (irresponsible and idiotic) master. By the time she'd acknowleged doing that, she had simply dismissed the human-like action with a shrug of her seven ton chassis. Caroline was reintegrated with her systems thanks to the Dangerous, Mute Lunatic taking her on a tour of Old Aperture, and GLaDOS was slowly getting used to all the new motions and reactions.

"Moron, you _do_ recall the data point regarding the upkeep necessary for a physically healthy human body, don't you?" She purred a nanosecond after activating her comm speakers in the room.

"Yeah... but I wish... isn't rest in... in there too?" Wheatley panted, laboring on the treadmill. GLaDOS increased its' speed fractionally, entirely spitefully. He wouldn't notice right now, but in ten minutes he'd be exhausted.

"Yes, and rest _is_ included in your schedule." She replied pleasently. "You know the part where you lie down, shut your eyes, and remain still until I wake you up? That is defined as 'rest', 'sleep', 'relaxation'-"

"You... overgrown... calculator." Wheatley huffed between breaths, cutting her off.

GLaDOS physically froze still, she could feel the 'human' reaction of irrational rage curling through her circuits like an acidic power surge. Then she began to tremble, unconsciously shaking in her ceiling mountings, her optic turning dark orange out of fury.

"Why you little-"

_BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!_

Her protocols interrupted with a blaring alarm, a demand that her core operating software would not allow her to ignore in any form. GLaDOS spun, looking around her chamber for the reason, producing a noise like a panting of breath from her speakers thanks -once more- to Caroline. She had to override a few minor firewalls to make the alarm stop, and then there was beautiful silence. She could _feel_ the disturbance in her facility, moreso than an examination of any data or video would explain to her.

Turbine failure. Again.

"Moron, this is your fault." She growled aloud, ignoring the monitors in favor of attending the problem.

She switched over the water pumps, vented the damaged cells into the backup turbines, and that would keep the reactors safe for the time being. But the real problem was the turbines. This was the _eighth_ set in _five_ years. Way too many. Science had validated the working life of the machinery, the assorted components, the materials... but they were still breaking. Still ruined. The set she was now examining was fractionally twisted, the blades warped _just enough_ to throw off the pressure of the water flow. More than enough to obliterate Aperture from existence if left unchecked.

Reasurred, GLaDOS put her secondary processors to work on troubleshooting, then she faced the monitors again.

Monitors which were blank.

"Moron!" She yelled, reconnecting the video feeds from the cameras in the chambers set aside for his housing and training. They showed dusty, empty offices. "Moron?"

GLaDOS physically turned, almost expecting him to run into her chamber with an ASHPD just like the Dangerous, Mute Lunatic had done so long ago. Her body curled back, up towards the ceiling, like a feline cowering into a shadow.

A quiet internal notification was all it took to make her jump. GLaDOS gave a yelp and almost smacked her Core faceplate into her lowest heat-sink ring. Then she checked the note -she'd found the problem with the turbines. Well, now that she knew what it was, it could wait.

She growled to herself and went looking for Wheatley, examining each and every single camera feed she could find, the traditional, AI way: by tapping the camera hard-drives directly. She zipped through them to no avail -the facility was empty, she was alone with her reactors and housekeeping duties. Then she came across a set of cameras whose hard-drives she couldn't tap into. And she received a nasty surge when she tried to hack them. Out of frustration she submitted an ordinary viewing request, and was surprised when it was acknowleged. The feed was sent to her main monitors, showing a camera viewpoint that, at present, was focused on her from the doorway of her chamber. There was another, too, which showed the view from her own optic and which she thought was decidedly creepy to look at but left displayed for the sake of Science.

"Okay..." Her voice echoed slightly. It was a live feed. GLaDOS' optic narrowed as she thought, then she requested the data for these cameras that had been recorded just before the turbine alarm had gone off.

The view changed. For one, her chassis hung limp from the ceiling mounts, and two, the optic-view camera feed was a distorted mess. The sensor readings told her that her optic aperture had been closed, so the feed should have been blank nothing, but GLaDOS could make out fractions of images throughout the garbled visual playback. And her chassis twitched onscreen, accompanied by a few mumbles and, once, a growled 'moron!'.

"I was... asleep?" GLaDOS said aloud, skipping ahead to the last couple of minutes of footage. She watched herself jerk suddenly when the turbine warning alarm went off, GLaDOS' onscreen self yelled 'calculator!' and then she froze still. The present GLaDOS distinctly recalled the next few moments of looking around the room, curled up near the ceiling, when she hadn't been able to find Wheatley, and as she skipped ahead she caught up to the current time.

But she distinctly recalled putting the moron to work on the treadmill, she thought. Then, however, she realised she couldn't remember any of what should have preceeded that happening. No getting him back from space, no putting his Core self into a fleshy human body, no making of or providing him with clothes and no previous tests, or even the act of building the training and living area in the first place. There wasn't a single bit of evidence that any of that had ever ocurred. No camera footage, no file notes, and the proposed living and training area didn't exist in the facility at all.

She disabled the feed, leaving the black-box-save feature to its own devices while she glared at the black monitors.

"I am a computer. I am a machine." GLaDOS recited. "I am _the_ Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System, I am GLaDOS. _How_, in the name of all things Science, was I _sleeping_?" She exclaimed.

~!~

AN: Tah-dah! A prologue! Now, don't go clicking on the 'review' button all at once and overload the poor server! However, there will be cake! :P And I'll try to respond to reviews where I can :3 Next chapter, we'll be taking a look at how Chell's life has progressed. :D

(AN: This is a replacement for my glaring error in the original prologue.)


	2. Midnight Run

AN: Wow, cool response :3 Those reviews really helped pick me up, I've been in such a bummed-out state for the last week, thank you guys! Couple of notes about the first chapter/prologue: I noticed some glaring errors that I somehow missed in my final check before posting it. I'll get around to reposting it or fixing it somehow, but for now I remain mortified :'( Suddenly changing the name and purpose of something several chapters later... tsk-tsk-tsk. Bad me! Well, I sincerely hope this one is up to standard!

Also: YES, I'm perfectly aware of the masses of 'artistic licence' I've taken in this chapter. :) Especially near the end. While I've tried my best to make it as realistic as possible, I'll admit here and now that I've never done anything of the like in my life, the closest I've ever got to that is youtube. Le sigh. I seriously think there's _so_ many untapped possibilities! So I try to do thorough research and brainstorming as well as any other methods I can think of to make things realistic. Personally, I focus on the thought that if I can't immerse myself one hundred percent in a story because there's something off, then how can I hope for others to do the same? Well, I did my best.

I just hope it's as good as it seemed when my brain threw it at me. XD

~!~

A hand waved in front of her face. Chell blinked, coming out of her reverie, then realised there was a voice in the room.

"Chell? Che-ell?"

She switched her vision to the source. Tight brown ringleted curls, freckled skin, a considerable overbite reigned slightly by wire bracers which showed when the girl grinned at having finally got her attention. Emma, one of her uni roommates.

"Man, Chell, what do you think about?" Emma asked. "You get this look in your eye sometimes, and I swear you'd forget to breathe if it wasn't a subconscious act."

"I think about before." Chell said quietly. Emma sighed an 'oh' and was silent, looking at the tv again for a lack of anything to say. Chell's thoughts drifted again. They'd just finished exams, and she was hoping madly that she'd passed them without incident. It would mark a significant milestone. Five years since leaving Aperture, five years since she'd wandered out of the wheat-field, exhausted and filthy.

Living the sheltered life of a test subject had not prepared her for this world of people, money and possessions, so armed with her usual stubbornness, she'd gone _looking_ for information. That brought her to the university -which happened to offer a sports scholarship and was particularly seeking gymnasts. It was the easiest thing she'd ever accomplished. It was the one thing that all of GLaDOS' testing had taught her that she could apply to this new life. How to be as fast, flexible, nimble and strong as she could possibly be at the same time. Now she had a wall of medals and awards, and a wealth of knowledge that she valued far higher than lumps of shiny yellow, white or orange-colored metal with her name stamped on them.

She shook herself out of it once more and focused on the television. There were adverts at the moment, but then the program returned. It was a documentary on the planet's history, going back thousands of years, to a time when humans had roamed the Earth's surface once before. They'd created art, buildings, machines... Three and a half thousand years ago, '1954' according to an engraved metal plate found wholly intact. Nineteen-hundred-and-fifty-four _what_, no one knew, but the current popular theory was that the figure signified the number of years of recorded history -when the Homo Sapiens of that time had learned to write and read.

_'We can see here that this machine was built to last. The moving parts have maintained their shape and, if I just give it a bit of a shove...'_ The presenter trailed off, ramming his shoulder against a crank-handle which was attached to a series of gears. After a moment it groaned into action, and he turned it several times with only a bit of effort, before letting the rusty metal crunch to a halt again. _'It even still works. So, clearly, humans had come a long way in the time they were around for. Just as we've come so far. Twenty years ago, computers were still science-fiction. Today, they make our cars work, they keep track of our money, and kids are playing games on them. It's entirely possible that these humans, the pre-Long Winter humans, might have had computers too. Maybe even things so advanced that whole libraries could be stored on something the size of a brick, and the information recalled in snippets, at will, by using search keywords that make the computer think and work for us.'_

_'By looking at these parts of the former human race, we can be forgiven for assuming that they might have thought in exactly the same way we do. Our early machines looked and acted much like these ancient things, they were rough and unrefined, and over the course of a few short decades we've made our own machines a heck of a lot more streamlined. We've also started using materials, synthetics, that are better in the short-term but which wouldn't stand the test of time as much as a few chunks of solid metal would do. If we suppose our ancestors used the same materials, then we can't expect much of their later world to have survived as long as this old crank-machine has.'_ The presenter was saying with a fond tone, patting the little jumble of gears. _'What we call science-fiction, these humans might have called commonplace. Motion-detecting software is on the drawing board today, but would our predecessors have had it in every room of every house? Would they have had computers that could look at a living thing through a camera lens and actually speak to it, react according to the emotions displayed on that living thing's face? Computers that could display pre-programmed emotions correctly and accurately in response to any given situation? We could really let our imagination run wild and wonder if there were computers with personalities, semi-sentient machines, with the capacity for _genuine _emotions, the capacity to _feel_.'_

Chell huffed suddenly and got up, hurrying to the kitchen. She splashed some cold water on her face, then filled a glass and quickly drank it. Her quickened pulse calmed slowly, mental images of GLaDOS, Wheatley, the turrets, all fading from her mind's eye. She refilled the glass and returned to the living room of the small Uni res house, trembling just slightly, only to find her three roommates had forgotten the tv in favor of looking to see what the matter was.

"You okay?" Lexi asked, getting up and crossing the room to her. The redhead pressed the back of her hand to Chell's forehead, frowning. "You're all hot, Chell, you feel alright?" She asked.

"It's... my brain just got away from me for a minute, there." Chell said to her friends, attempting a smile to reassure them. Lexi frowned, then after a few moments it melted away to a concerned expression.

"You've got those hard eyes again." She sighed. "You're not gonna explain, huh?"

"My brain just got away from me." Cell repeated firmly. The other girl groaned and rolled her eyes, going back to her seat.

"When someone's worried about you, it's a good thing, Chell." She grumbled.

"It's probably just the stress getting out of her system since exams are finished, Lexi, give her a break. We're all stressed." Sarah spoke up.

"I'll get some sleep." Chell said. "I haven't slept well all week. Maybe that's it." She continued, trying to _sound_ reassuring as well.

"G'night." The others chorused, Sarah and Emma flashing smiles and Lexi only glancing up to meet her gaze for a brief second.

"Okay, 'night." Chell headed to her little room, shutting the door behind her.

For a minute, all she did was stand there and look around herself. The room was kind of small, it looked cluttered with all the things in it. Single bed slotted in under the window across from her, less than three steps away. The walls to her left and right were covered in medals hanging from temporary picture hooks all over the place, the results of her scholarship obligations. She was the university's prize gymnastics representative, their ace-in-the-hole. Silky pennants obscured every other spare bit of wall and hung from the high shelves that held a multitude of trophies, too. Between the door and the bed was a little side-table with a radio-alarm clock on it, her keys and chunky little wallet sat there too, and on the far-left wall was a desk for studying at. Beside her was a built-in wardrobe that contained her few items of aparrel, though it lacked doors because there just wasn't enough space for them.

"Hmm." Chell frowned, setting her glass on the side-table and then kneeling in the narrow gap between her desk and wardrobe. She reached in between the cloth items and touched a hard, white synthetic surface just visible from the other side of the room. Her Long Fall Boots. Her pulse thumped in her mouth as she pulled them out of hiding. Sure, they were a little bit scratched-up, but considering what they're gone through and saved her from, they were in good condition. GLaDOS had left them with her for whoever-knows-what reason. Maybe the AI had forgotten to take them away? Maybe she didn't care whether Chell kept them or not?

Chell sighed and patted the boots fondly, as the tv presenter had done with the ancient crank-machine. She smiled. Then she brushed probably-nonexistent dust from the white, glossy surface and put them back in the far corner, behind everything, and got changed for bed.

She lay down on top of the covers -it was a warm night, even though she wasn't wearing particularly warm pyjamas- and Chell closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep. She didn't like doing it. Any second, she expected to see a Relaxation Vault around herself, the Vault Pod panels sliding closed above her face, impervious to a pair of human fists hammering against them for release. Or a crappy, dilapidated hotel room, with peeling wallpaper and dinky lampshades and lame prints in warped picture frames-

Chell's eyes snapped open with a harsh gasp. Her heart was thundering in her chest, her breaths ragged. She looked at the clock. Four minutes. Her brow was damp and it took another minute to get her breathing under control.

She gulped a mouthful of water and tried again, focusing on steady breaths, listening to her pulse and making her foot twitch in time with it for good measure. She thought hard about her surroundings. Pennants, medals, furniture, glass window-

_-glass wall-_

Table, clock radio-

_-radio-_

Carpet-

_-floor tiles_, _wallpaper, lampshade-_

Textbooks, binder folder, note paper-

_-clipboard-_

Bed-

_-cryobed_, _fluro ceiling lights_, _toilet_, _mini-fridge_-

A yelp and she was bolt-upright, her fists clenched in the sheets, her mouth gaping wide. Her chest was heaving but Chell was dizzy, it wasn't until she consciously gasped at the air that anything got through to her starving lungs. She forced one shaking hand to open up and planted it over her face instead, heedless of the wet slick of perspiration on her skin. The room was blue-white, Chell dared looking to her right at the open curtains and oh-so-slowly dragged her gaze upwards, having to force herself to look at the gleaming moon. They said people went mad under the full moon, but it was only a three-quarter crescent tonight. Was she going mad? Was she insane?

Was she _really_ brain-damaged, and had she _really_ been up there in space? Sucked through a hole in the floor here on Earth and almost flung to oblivion in that frozen vacuum of nothing?

She looked once more at the clock, it was an effort because she fully expected the chunky clock radio to have turned into the sleek, cornerless, near-spherical radio from the Relaxation Vault. She had actually managed to get to sleep, it was just after midnight. The numbers ticked from 12:11 to 12:12 even as she stared at them, and Chell was reminded forcefully of the countdown clock from the second time she'd run the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device Basic Comprehension Test Track. After Wheatley had rocked and crashed their way through the area where so many test subjects -lives now defunct- had been stored. Like cans on the shelves in the supermarket. He'd gone and picked the one at the back, and knocked half the shelf over to get at it.

Finishing off her glass of water, Chell lay down once more, her trembling hands clasped together over her stomach and her eyes locked onto the ceiling. She picked a subject at random and started reciting mathematical formulae in her head to keep herself awake -she would not go back to sleep tonight, she decided. Sleep was not her friend. Dreams were not her friends. Like turrets, like Wheatley, like GLa-

Wait, was GLaDOS her friend or not? Sure, the AI had repeatedly tried to kill her, but after those few hours of working together, couldn't they be considered friends? Or was that Chell's own desperation for some sort of sappy, happy ending to a horror story that put the concept of GLaDOS being humane in her head? Could a machine _be_ 'humane'?

A growl escaped her and Chell got up, screwing her eyes shut and then glaring at the wall. Shiny medals glittered back at her in the moonlight. Something else did too -the Long Fall Boots, the white surface gleaming as though they were trying to get her attention. She hadn't put them away properly, one had fallen over and now stuck out between two pairs of jeans.

"Nothing happens without reason." Chell whispered to herself, still conscious of her friends sleeping on the other side of the paper-thin walls. It wasn't anything supernatural making them visible, she simply hadn't hidden them away properly. She shook her head, walked to the wardrobe and then stopped short, wondering what the hell she was thinking. Halfway back to her bed, she faced the wardobe again. Then the bed. Then the wardrobe. Then she snatched her pillow up and punched it viciously, frustrated, glaring at the Aperture boots from the corner of her vision. She refused to throw them away, they had saved her life so many times. Simply learning to not wear them everywhere -she didn't want the attention that the strange-looking boots would bring, but she couldn't remember a time without them on her feet- had been a monumental effort. It had taken ages to wean herself of toting them around in a huge backpack all day, too, and ages again to teach herself not to run back to the res house and check on them between classes.

Maybe once, for old-time's sake...

Chell flung her pillow aside and held her breath, excited now, and she jumped for the wardrobe and yanked the boots out. Using a tee-shirt from her washing basket, Chell polished the glossy white casings thoroughly, and the barely-scuffed heelsprings, a little tremble of joy rushing along her spine as the Aperture logo flashed when she tilted a boot under a moonbeam. She was smiling now, running her hands over them, recalling the feeling of wind whipping her hair and the _whooshing_ sounds that went with it to steal her breath away.

Freefall... terminal velocity... _impact_.

The resounding thunderclap of the boots smacking into a floor surface, the heelsprings coping effortlessly, the only evidence being cracked tiles under her feet and her pulse racing along under the influence of surging adrenaline.

Chell's face hurt, she was grinning so hard. A faint clicking sound assured her that the latches were secure and she stood up, glancing at herself in the mirror. She was dressed now. Loose cargo pants rolled up and buttoned above her knees, and a close-fitting tank top and sports bra. Her favorite training clothes. Her hair was up in a ponytail, and her feet and calves were enclosed snugly within the high-tech Aperture footwear. Silently, she crept out of the house, nervous of every faint _thwunk, thwunk,_ of the heelsprings reacting to her footsteps. Even her roommates didn't know about them, the boots were her greatest secret.

But once she was outside, the door shut behind her and the outline of her housekeys prominent in her pocket, Chell breathed deeply and relaxed. Her spine was arched, shoulders back, the posture enforced by the boots never forgotten. Gently, she rocked back on her heels and let herself bounce slightly. The very second her left toe met the ground again Chell leapt into a sprint, hunching down and rocketing forwards. Even without Propulsion Gel, the shape and mechanics of the Long Fall Boots increased her maximum running speed to well over thirty kilometers an hour if she could manage to keep it up over a bit of distance. Unassisted, it took a powerful athlete to get anywhere near that speed, let alone maintain it as long as she did with the help of the boots. Chell flew across the empty carpark, turned right as hard as she could on the far side of it and ended up running several meters _up the side of a building_ before gravity beckoned, and she kicked away from it and flipped over in midair, heelsprings coming down on the bitumen and propelling her effortlessly forward.

Chell leapt up onto a bench seat in one long stride, continued up onto the roof of a car several yards away and raced along a line of them before leaping to a dumpster and then off it again for another smooth somersault to cover the distance between airborne and ground. She landed hard, landed still, her right foot came down first and her knee bent just slightly while her left boot made contact with the ground and took its' share of the load, leaving her crouching, panting in exhiliration and her eyes wide as she looked quickly around herself.

The noise echoed faintly back at her off a nearby wall, sounding like a car backfiring in the distance. Chell's jaw remained wide open, hot breath fogging out and deliciously icy-cold oxygen hissing its' way down her throat in return. Her gaze darted over her surroundings, her mind churning. What else could she run on? What could she jump from? Every surface was analyzed critically by the quick-thinking athlete. It was barely the middle of the night and she had no wish to go to sleep, no one would disturb her, nothing would interrupt.

~!~

AN: -peeks out from behind PC screen- H-hello there :3 Well, as you can see, I was telling the truth. Lots of artistic licence there. -points- And also playing way too much _Prototype_ and _Mirror's Edge_ lately :/ But I seriously think that the Long Fall Boots could do _SO_ much more than saving you from a fall at terminal velocity. I've looked at the mechanics of them, heck I even jimmied up a pair made from scraps in my garage that, while I'd be more likely to break my leg wearing them than have the boots protect me from broken legs, they helped me a ton in imagining how the boots work, how they _could_ work and how they definitely _don't_. (Note: Homemade LFB Mark 2: probably gonna replace the elastic bands with gaffa tape or similar. Heelsprings that fall off aren't protecting me from anything.)

So constructive criticism would be great :) Especially about the freerunning stuff, since the next chapter is kind of... well... _based_ on her pulling off freerunning moves :D I can see where it doesn't fit in _Portal_ and _Portal 2,_ but I really think the boots are capable of doing what I've made Chell do with them :D Well... maybe not to _that_ extent IRL, but woudn't it be great if they did? XD

I'm not going to hold my chapters to ransom for reviews though. Weekly updates seems reasonable, give or take a couple of days depending on my internet connection, so that's what I'm aiming for. See you then! :D


	3. I See You

AN: Hello :) Well, I'm sorry! I meant to update a couple of days ago but once again, I'm late because I'm lazy. No escuses, just lazy -_- though I really will try my best to be on time next week! :D One thing I noticed in teh last chapter, though, is that I forgot to introduce my OC's or even mention the fact that I do have a couple. They won't be playing a major role, though, so hopefully it won't be too confusing for anyone. At the least, I do want to state now that I WILL be omitting some of the canon characters simply because they don't fit in my plot, but if anyone particularly wants a certain canon character in the story, let me know in a review and I'll find a spot for them. So far, the ones I'm definitely leaving out are: Cave Johnsen, P-Body and ATLAS (there is a good reason for that which I'll explain later in the story) and Caroline in any form of a seperate consciousness from GLaDOS. Wheatley will play a VERY tiny part, but he will be in here somewhere.

As for my OC's, I do have a short bio for each one. I'll put it on my bio page for anyone who's interested in reading it, but fear not! I typically refer to people with descriptive terms as opposed to writing their names a hundred million times, so hopefully it's not too confusing :)

Yes, I'm well aware that this is a short chapter, but honestly I didn't want to wreck it by jamming in all kinds of rubbish just for the sake of raising the word count. Hopefully it's still good :) And... on we go! :D

~!~

"Bloody mule." Lexi grumbled under her breath, sitting up. She couldn't sleep, no thanks to Chell, though she knew for a fact that she was only in a bad mood because she was worried. She particularly liked the other female. Chell was one of a very small number who put up with her short temper and blunt attitude. Lexi was just as stubborn as the other girl in vowing to make sure they remained friends.

She got up, thinking idly of getting a drink of water, and wondered for a moment if Chell might like a refill. It _was_ particularly warm tonight. Lexi had opted to forgo her blankets, she'd had the window open yet there was a significant lack of a breeze.

Decided, she left her room. She heard a faint _thwack_ noise that echoed slightly and she paused, wondering what it was, then shrugged it off and went to Chell's door. As she raised her hand to knock she noticed it was open a fraction, and she gave it a gentle push and peeked in.

"Hey, Chell?" The shorter girl whispered. No response. Chell's window was shut but the moonlight gleamed in, making all her medals glitter. Lexi stuck her head in the room. "Chell?" She tried again. The bed was empty and messed, the room devoid of life, and Lexi frowned at the pillow lying at the foot of the bed, on the floor. She withdrew from the room. Maybe Chell was in the toilet?

Lexi shrugged and went to the bathroom, knocked softly on the door beside that, but even as she did, she noticed that there was no light on in there. Nothing showed under the door. Lexi went back to Chell's bedroom and pushed the door open wide, glaring at the room. Totally empty. The pillow -and a tee-shirt she saw in the corner too- were out of place for the meticulously tidy woman.

Concerned now, Lexi headed to the kitchen for her glass of water, thinking hard. Where was the other girl?

The banging noise came again and she looked out the window at the still night. Chell sometimes went for a run when she couldn't sleep. Was she outside? Was the banging noise something to do with her, Lexi wondered? It reached her ears a third time and she put the glass down, quickly got changed to a pair of track-pants and a tee-shirt, then she grabbed her keys and left the house, following her ears towards the University carpark. Barefoot, she was careful of the loose bitumen path and she walked slowly. She heard the noise just once more before reaching the relatively-empty carpark, it was definitely here somewhere, and she sat on a bench seat that was on top of a small rise overlooking the broad, black expanse. Nothing moved. The horizon was just beginning to change color for the sunrise and Lexi sighed, appreciative of the faint breath of air that tickled her skin. Better than nothing. Nowhere near enough to shift her heavy, wavy auburn hair, but better than nothing.

And then she heard it again. Rapid _thunk-thunk-thunk_ noises like running footsteps, and she jumped up to see the area better. A lone figure raced out into the open, practically flying low across the warm ground. The body was slender, athletic, a facet accented by the simple white tank-top that the person was wearing. A female. Lexi couldn't see the legs well, the woman's pants were dull-colored and loose around her thighs, but her lower legs and her feet showed up stark white. Strangely, as she ran, her feet didn't seem to touch the ground properly. Her toes did, for sure, but the noise that she was making didn't match. It came a split-second before her toe made contact with the bitumen.

The woman was racing straight at a wall, aiming for it, and Lexi's heart leapt up in her throat. But with the grace of a deer the woman flung herself straight at the wall and ran straight up the side of it for more than ten meters! Near the top, she kicked off hard and tumbled backwards like an Olympic diver, her body curled into a roll and then flicked out straight again, then with an almighty _THWACK_ the woman's boots collided with the ground and was still. Lexi was gaping -the athlete remained kneeling for several seconds, then she stood up and turned, looking calmly around herself. The moonlight shone on her face, illuminating her dark-colored ponytail and tanned skin as she clearly gave an annoyed huff and crossed her arms together over her chest. Chell!

The taller woman broke into a jog, taking long, springing strides as she built up her speed. Soon enough, her steps were rapid _thunk-thunk-thunk_ noises again and she was curving around, aiming herself straight at another building.

This one was lower, Lexi could only stare in amazement as Chell threw herself at it, ran up the side of the building, then kicked off and flipped over midair once more, her trajectory flinging her feet-first at the next closest building. Already halfway up it, Chell's quick strides took her to its' roof and she transferred easily to the horizontal surface, having grabbed the ledge and pulled herself up, rolled over on her shoulders, and then stood upright, all in one fluid move. She kept running. She hit the edge of the roof and leapt away, her arms outstretched as, for a brief moment, Chell seemed to hang weightlessly in the air. Then gravity took hold of her and she was falling, tucking her body into a ball and rolling. Her boots hit the topmost surface of the next building in line and she was sprinting again. Effortless. Fearless.

"Ch-Chell!" Lexi yelled. Her voice cracked at the first syllable and all she managed was to hoarsely cough out the word.

Then her voice stuck completely. Chell simply leapt from that building to the next one and continued on, springing up over the air-conditioning units, using them to vault herself forwards. Lexi's eyes raced ahead, tracking the path her friend was clearly taking. Chell was aiming for the exceedingly high roof of the University auditorium. It was over five stories tall, shaped a bit like giant, twin triangular wedges. The inspiration for the shape, Lexi recalled, had been a kid's animated movie. Something to do with a pride of lions, she thought. Chell was racing straight at the lower, slightly-flatter section, her momentum surely too much to simply stop where she was.

But if she was too low when she jumped, she'd impale herself on the pointed edge!

Lexi looked back at her -Chell was making ground, racing higher, like she was running for the sky. She was clearly in no mood to stop at all, she was going to take that jump if it succeeded or killed her. And Lexi, watching her, didn't even notice a trickle of blood from between her fingers where she was crushing her keys in a white-knuckled grip.

Chell hit the edge of the last building and flung herself off it, once more a weightless and graceful projectile. The approaching dawn offered a few golden rays of sun that flashed brightly off Chell's boots and Lexi scowled, screwing her watering eyes shut, rubbing a balled fist into them to clear her vision. Her ears rang with a screeching metal noise like a train-wreck and she squinted at the last place she'd seen her friend, fighting down the thumping of her heart having jumped up in her throat, still scrubbing viciously at one eye and then the other to clear them. She heard nothing, saw nothing. There was no sound. No movement.

~!~

AN: MUAHAHAHA! -hides-


	4. First sleeping, now this?

AN: Wow... So I got a bunch of alerts telling me that people are putting my story on upload alert, etc, but not one review for my last chapter? :( Dang. Guess I'll have to work harder! Or... maybe my AN was too wordy? :/ Okay, so I'll go short on this one! Just this quick note; I'm not greatly confident with my grasp of GLaDOS' character, so I'd REALLY welcome some feedback concerning her, okay? Please? -mangapuppyface-

~!~

She groaned lowly, barely even noticing the heavy clunking noise of her heat-sink rings shifting into a higher gear. The coolant pumping throughout her chassis wasn't _really_ helping much and thus, GLaDOS had a headache.

Despite knowing the answer, she asked herself yet again how it was possible to have a headache. She then reminded herself that a headache was as much of an impossibility for a computer as falling asleep or dreaming, but she'd already done those so why the hell not?

Maybe it was a migraine, she decided, her optic dark-orange in an unfocused glare aimed vaguely at the floor panels beneath her chassis. The problem was the calculations, the design computations, _everything_ relating to her current predicament. That being the fact that vital parts of the facility were not connected to the mainframe and could only be accessed by a human or humanoid -such as a certain overpowered turbine engine plant that was wearing out the machine components as fast as her dream-self had spitefully tried to do to Wheatley with a treadmill.

The master design, everything that was currently finalised, was displayed on the spread-out monitors surrounding her. GLaDOS barely saw it except during moments of clarity when a collective set of calculations slotted together and her processors gained a moment's relief before the demand took them over again. She glimpsed it now -and her overheated circuits tingled with something like pride, making her forget the throbbing pain in them for just that long. From either a mechanical or aesthetic point of view, it was beautiful. She couldn't wait to finish. But of course, getting finished meant-

Another out-load moan in protest of the throbbing, heat-induced pain. She promised herself a major chassis overhaul once this was done. Vision took a backseat to the demanding calculations and GLaDOS let herself go blind, knowing full well where the priorities lay. A sob came over the speakers, the coolant was so hot that it was expanding in the hoses, the pressure was rising, it couldn't pump fast enough to disperse the heat. A hose started to leak, then another. The dribbles of fluid ran down her chassis and made greasy-textured tracks through the thin film of dust on her white painted shielding.

In order to maintain pressure, new coolant flooded into the fluid jackets in her chassis, causing even more to leak from the cracked hoses and failing seals. Was that coolant spilled on her optic or was she actually delirious? Was this her own tailored version of heat stroke?

Whatever it was, she grumbled decicively to herself, it sucked.

Satisfied beeping echoed around the chamber as full consciousness came back to her, seemingly hours later. The noise was intermingled with her audible panting, her headache still in full swing yet tolerable enough to push aside and discover the cause of the soft beeping. All calculations finished, design finalised, estimated build time was seven hours.

GLaDOS backed up the file several times, then shipped it off to manufacturing. Then she let her chassis go slack, issuing several commands to the maintenance pit below her and the robotic arms hidden within, and she snapped her optic shut and happily let sleep take her elsewhere.

Upon waking, the robotic arms had long-since finished their jobs and gone back into standby mode. GLaDOS' chassis was clean, polished, and the busted fittings either repaired or replaced. The leaked coolant had been cleaned up from the floor, too, her coolant and hydraulic reserves had been replenished with new fluids, and her heat-sink rings were now practically dawdling at minimum operating speed.

GLaDOS searched the mainframe eagerly, coming upon the security camera footage located in manufacturing. An excited shiver ran throughout her circuits. But she still had to write the _programming_ for the damned thing, and regretfully turned her attention elsewhere to grind her way through gigabyte after gigabyte of code. The Mark 1 had been sent up to her chamber well before she finished -she determinedly didn't even look at it until the programming was done.

Oh, but _then..._ then she turned her optic on the machine propped up like Frankenstein's monster on a support framework. Unlike the fictional creature, this thing was very real and it was _very_ beautiful, GLaDOS thought proudly. Lightweight titanium-alloy exoskeletal structure formed by overlapping plates; musculature composed of masses of fine, high-strength, interwoven elastic polymer filaments; a powerful and microscopically-detailed sensory input/output network; an Aperture Science Portal Device built into the left arm (it held eight charged shots and even that had been the limits of her abilities, since she'd wanted it compact) and also, inbuilt Aperture Science Long Fall heelsprings. Those were just the necessary components. Aesthetically, she'd had the 'skin' painted white just like her own chassis shielding and the Aperture logo was stamped broadly in black across the left pectoral plate, the main optics were amber like her own, and the bipedal droid was slender in build and appearance, feminine though it lacked the unnecessary (she thought) mammaries.

Really the only thing she couldn't do was give it hair. Aesthetics had to make way for functionality, unfortunately. All that work had resulted in a humanoid android body that could access the places she couldn't through the mainframe. The downsides she was determined to fix included the fact that in order to make it work at all, the immediate motherboard, processor and RAM drives in the thing took up the entire thoracic cavity. There was no room for a power supply, so if she _really _had to disconnect it and run it wirelessly, it would run off the ASPD's limited battery, though that would last a bare twelve minutes and then that would also be rendered useless. It was one thing to be shoved in a potato, incapable of anything more than slow claps and voicing the truth, it was wholly another thing altogether to -in essence- recreate her entire being on a human-sized scale. Five-foot-ten to be exact.

Thick cables descended from the ceiling, connecting to a multitude of ports along the android's spine and across the scalp. They resembled hair... vaguely. More importantly, they comprised the main power supply and all the data-transfer lines needed to control it. GLaDOS closed her own optic and her chassis hung limp, as she wanted to devote her internal systems to this new form. Chassis functions were unnecessary, she left only the subconscious chassis functions active, like coolant and hydraulic controls.

The android's eyes glowed softly and they opened, and her immediate reaction was shock. GLaDOS' main chassis hung twenty feet away, and it was a hell of a lot bigger from this persepctive. It twitched as she processed the memory of looking up at Wheatley when he had inhabited it. GLaDOS resisted the urge to move it and reassure herself that she was still connected. She accessed the programming code she'd written, causing the android's arms to lift, turning her new right hand in front of her face and examining the ASPD that took the place of the left. The exoskeletal plating shifted smoothly, allowing the action. She then made each of her new fingers twitch and flex, then she caused the body to sit up from the support framework. The cabling trailed loosely as she finally made it to a standing position free of the frame, they were safe in this slack manner so it wouldn't catch and break.

GLaDOS forced down her excitement and moved around slowly, pacing across the floor of her chamber, working her way slowly to a jog and then a sprint to test the android's physique. Trickles of Test Solution Euphoria worked their way through to her Core, and the android body shivered slightly in enjoyment at that.

Well, that answered one other question she had. The Test Solution Euphoria hardcode affected both her conscious Core and also whichever body she currently maintained a greater control over, despite being primarily an aspect of the main chassis. If she was not connected to the chassis at all, she wondered, would she still feel it as strongly? Once again, there was a big difference between being a potato and this highly complex android form.

An internal notification reached her -the new turbines were already one percent more worn-out than they should have been. And this figure would climb if she didn't do something about the engines driving them.

Patiently, GLaDOS withdrew her consciousness from the android and slowly regained full control of her main chassis again. It was a disconcerting feeling. Nice as it was to view her surroundings from a new point of view, she didn't think she'd be doing it very often. Once all controls and systems checked out, she arranged a section of primary cabling that would remain connected to the android at all times, then sealed it carefully in a protective casing and sent it on its' way to the power plant and the misbehaving turbine motors. There was work to do.

~!~

AN: So, was that any better? I'm a little afraid of GLaDOS' character, I think, so I avoided dialogue. :( I need encouragement! Well, I don't like holding stories to ransom for reviews, so I won't do that, but I do have an idea... :3 If I get past 25 reviews after posting this one, next week will be a double update! There's six attached to this story now, so that's not TONS to ask for, is it? :3 Go on, push that little button down there! Reviews! Reviews! You know you want to! ;)


	5. Beautiful Sunrise

AN: Late chapter is late. Sorry author has no excuses ;_; but is planning a double-update to make up for it, so look out for another chapter in the next 24-hours! ... If I can manage to finish writing it -_-

~!~

Chell sighed as she squinted at the curved edge of the rising sun. Dark-orange, slowly turning gold, it was one of the two most beautiful things she had ever seen. The other, of course, was sun_set_. Watching the sky turn from light blue to dark blue, then to various shades of pink, a different orange, to scarlet and then rich purples that slowly gave way to deepest dark blue and finally midnight-black. She had a unique perch to watch from, too. The auditorium roof gave her an uninterrupted view for almost 360 degrees, she was stunned not to have thought of this before. But there was an explination for that which made sense.

Even as she stuck her legs out straight and examined the Long Fall Boots, she sighed disappointedly. Her friends would never believe her story, even with the boots as evidence. That her body was really _thousands_ of years old, and had survived the Long Winter underground in cryo-stasis? How could she expect them to believe something like that? It was like science-fiction, it was the whole reason she'd never opened her mouth when questioned as to where she'd come from.

Aware that the coming daylight brought the risk of being seen, Chell reluctantly agreed with her common-sense and stood up, jumping down from the auditorium roof -a five story drop- and landing with ease. She then made her way back to the res house at a relaxed lope, still thoroughly enjoying the springing step and the effortless, fluid movement.

Two houses away, though, she paused to take the boots off. Just in case her roommates were awake already. She then walked the rest of the way, but when she came to putting her key in the wire door she found it was already unlocked. Nervously, Chell opened it. The main door was wide open too, she saw Lexi in the kitchenette, making coffee.

"H-hey, Lexi." Chell attempted a smile. She was pretty sure she failed, but the other girl's eyes snapped up to hers and Lexi gave a heavy sigh. Then she quickly closed the distance between them even as Chell was edging in and shutting the door, and Lexi wrapped her arms around Chell's waist, her fingertips barely missing the Long Fall Boots hidden in one hand behind Chell's back.

"Chell, I'm so sorry about last night." Lexi rushed out, hugging her tightly and then stepping back to look right at her. Her hands clamped firmly on Chell's shoulders. "Chell, you know you _can_ talk to me about anything, right? Anything at all."

"I-I know, Lexi, it's okay." Chell tried to reassure her. "My head just got away from me last night, I was thinking about all these things at once and it overwhelmed me. It's okay. I got a bit of sleep, and I went for a walk this morning. I feel a lot better now." She insisted. Lexi's grip remained firm for several moments more, before she let out a breath and squeezed Chell into another hug.

"Alright, just don't forget that. We care about you." She said again.

Then abruptly, Lexi backed off and bustled to the kitchenette.

"Exam results are being posted today, are you excited?" Lexi asked brightly, busying herself with coffee.

"Yeah." Chell perked up, happy to get off the subject of her mental wellbeing. "Oh, are you making me one?" She teased. "Just let me get changed, I had a bit of a workout." Chell added, edging towards the hallway.

"Sure, sure." Lexi waved her off, not even glancing in her direction. "One diabetic-coma-in-a-cup coming up!"

"Sweet." Chell grinned and escaped to her bedroom. She hid the Long Fall Boots -carefully, this time- then quickly switched her sweaty workout clothes for something more comfortable. Shorts and a tee, a pair of sneakers, and she made her bed and tidied the room. Chell was still brushing her hair on the way back to the living room, where Lexi sat with three cups on the coffee table, and one in her hands.

"Blue one." Lexi nodded at the mugs. Chell picked it up, inhaled deeply, then gulped at the scalding liquid.

"Mmm, perfect." She smiled. She set it down again and chose a seat, determinedly working at her hair. Less than two minutes later, Sarah and Emma wandered in, in various states of consciousness. Presumably, the smell of coffee had been what roused them.

"Oh, you didn't..." Emma mumbled, aparrently sniffing out the cups more than seeing them. She groped blindly for one as she sat, and Lexi pushed Emma's mug into her grasp.

"I did." She smiled. She still seemed on-edge, Chell noted. Maybe she was _really_ upset about the previous night? "Results today. I can't believe we're finally here, to be honest. And in less than a month, we'll be moving out and going places." Lexi said brightly. Chell sighed, letting the conversation distract her.

"Four years, and it's all come down to a minute spent staring at a bit of paper to find your name." Sarah yawned. "We should celebrate. Ideas?"

"Box-head." Emma grinned sleepily. Lexi groaned, rolling her eyes.

"No. Way."

"Aw."

"Swimming? It's warm enough for the beach." Chell suggested. The others clearly gave that serious thought.

"Won't _everyone_ be there?" Sarah asked.

"Blargh." Chell made a face. She'd forgotten that, and the idea of a crowd certainly displeased all four of them. Then she met Lexi's gaze and both of them spoke at the same time.

"Movie marathon."

"Epic." Emma sat up, slurping another mouthful before putting her cup on the table. "Should we go rent them or borrow them off the guys?"

"Let's go to their place. Seven of us, a couple slabs, sweet movies. Can't go wrong." Lexi said quickly.

"All in favor, raise your hands?" Sarah said with comic formality, doing so and causing the other three to chime in when she cried 'aye!' They burst into laughter.

"Pity they're not aware of the concept of 'morning'." Emma sighed. "Unless they're _still_ awake from last night, we can't go see them until at least one o'clock."

"That won't happen." Lexi shrugged. "So, who's up for breakfast?" She asked suddenly.

"Have we got any Poptarts left?" Chell asked as Lexi collected their cups for another round of sweet caffine. She followed, rummaging through the cupboards until she found a single packet. "Dang. Two left."

"Splits." Emma called. Chell nodded and put them in the toaster. Even after five years of eating a minimum three times a day, the prospect of food -instead of adrenal vapour packed with molecules of nutrients- still thrilled her. Chell watched intently, only half listening to the others discussing something. Well, she registered their voices at least. The words were a lost cause.

Until something icy-cold trickled down the back of her neck and Chell gave a squeal and jumped, spinning around. Emma and Sarah burst out laughing, while Lexi stood just nearby with an ice-cube in her hand, grinning.

"Her idea!" Lexi cried, pointing at Sarah. Said blonde gaped at her, or at least attempted to gape instead of giggling, but by now Chell was laughing too. She wrestled the ice-cube off Lexi and ran after Sarah, who scrambled unsuccessfully to get out of the way. Emma helped muddle her up and Chell shoved the ice-cube down the front of Sarah's pyjama top, making her shriek in fright at the cold of it.

"Gotcha!"

"We are _so_ immature." Lexi said, sticking her tongue out and high-fiving Chell as the taller girl ventured back into the kitchen to find their breakfast. The chocolate smell was mouthwatering.

"What's the point to life if-"

"If it's not fun?" Lexi finished with her. "All hail that, sister." She winked. "So, were you hearing anything we said?"

"Something about food?" Chell tried.

"We decided to make them come over here instead. This place is cleaner, for one thing, and we've got a better tv." Sarah spoke up. "You up for that?"

"Sure." Chell nodded, cutting the poptarts in half so they each got a piece. "What time?"

"We figure four o'clock. The guys _should_ be awake by then. And if everyone chips in, we can get pizza too."

"Sweet." Chell grinned. She handed the plate around, then Lexi was done with their second round of coffee and several minutes of silence ensued, each of the women's thoughts her own.

"Dibs on the shower." Emma said after a while, leaving the room. Chell got up, taking her cup and Emma's to the sink, and she made short work of the few morning dishes.

"How was your run this morning, anyway?" Lexi asked, getting her attention. "You were a bit red in the face when you got back. You don't usually puff out so easy."

"It was good, I pushed a bit harder than usual." Chell answered.

"That's cool then. I heard some funny noises early this morning, about five-thirty. Banging. Couldn't get back to sleep after that. I noticed you were gone, I was hoping you were alright."

"Banging noises." Chell repeated, suddenly tense. She glanced over her shoulder at Lexi -whose expression was taut once more. "Can't say I remember any banging. I came back by the carpark, I didn't hear anything that way."

"Weird. That's where I heard the noises from." Lexi said. Chell froze up. "I went and had a look around, we must have missed each other by a couple of minutes or something?"

"Probably." Chell tried for a laugh. It came out weaker than she'd hoped for. "But that reminds me, I really should have a shower before we go in. Thanks." She chuckled again, and quickly made her way to her room. "Emma! Save me some water, yeah?" Chell called through the bathroom door as she passed it. There was a muffled acknowlegement and Chell shut herself in her room, making sure that the door was fully closed before she went to the wardrobe and held her clothes aside to see the Long Fall Boots. They were still there, tucked right in the corner, the heelsprings now tied together with an old hairtie to make sure they didn't fall over again. Chell sighed in relief and shuffled around, finding her things for the day. A knock on the door several minutes later signalled the shower was free to use, and she scurried out, eager for the steaming, relaxing water.

~!~

AN: Yay :3 please, please, PLEASE, R&R! Reviews keep mah fingers typin' so please R&R!


	6. Functional Error

AN: Woohoo! Double update, yay! :D Except... well, when I did all my proofreading I realised there's quite a bit of technobabble in this chapter, which is something I _love_ to read but can occasionally let myself get carried away with in fanfics. :/ Le sigh. If it's too much, by all means, please tell me! This one was kinda hard to get down and I admit I used the technobabble as a filler while I was sitting there, thinking 'wtf was I about to write?'

Anyhoo, on with the chapter! Shoutouts in the bottom AN for a couple of the reviews that stuck out and _really_ made me smile -I neeeded them, thank you! Thank you so much!

~!~

GLaDOS paused, fingertips poised above the control console, and with some difficulty she waited out the shudders that had rippled through her android frame. She hadn't yet pinpointed the cause, which annoyed her, and even more frustrating was that they were becoming more frequent, longer, and more debilitating. Half an hour ago, she'd been forced to kneel because she lost all but the least of her motor functions. As was the pattern, a long and severe episode like that should have been followed by two or three bouts of faint, barely-perceptible twitches. Like flinching, not like _losing control of your damn hand_!

"This isn't your fault." She said kindly to her reflection in a shiny silver panel. "If [Subject Name Here] hadn't been such a violent lunatic then she wouldn't have been a danger to the facility and you wouldn't have had to sacrifice highly-beneficial short term Science for minimally-beneficial long term Science." GLaDOS told herself firmly. "So this isn't your fault."

Her reflection, a little warped by the metal sheet and entirely lacking in any sort of facial structure, gave no outward reaction to the statement. But it made GLaDOS feel a little calmer for having said it aloud, and she looked away to continue her manual reprogramming, fingertips practically dancing over the dated keypad, making loud clacking noises. The rear-projection screen, which showed only a black and green display, gave off a neon glow not unlike raw nuclear waste.

If it wasn't a Required Operations Apparatus GLaDOS would have put her fist through it in frustration when she found out she couldn't simply hack the brain-dead automaton of a computer that was monitoring her turbine engine power plant.

The redundancy of this system continued to astound her. Ninety-nine percent of the facility was a massive, glorious extention of her own body. Nothing was beyond her power -she could make test chambers literally from thin air and spare panels, she could manipulate complicated machinery with the grace and precision of a skilled artist, or she could design and build immense superstructures on a whim and then tear them apart in whatever manner took her fancy. Explosives, careful deconstruction, corrosive chemicals, supernova temperatures or brute temper tantrums.

Yet there were crucial system functions kept out of her reach, things that could change the entire facility for a significantly better or worse outcome, and she was practically hamstrung trying to access them.

She added a few more expletives in capital letters to her growing file on the 'Old Aperture Employee Database' and resumed pacing.

"What if this had been an emergency?" GLaDOS muttered, pausing when another shudder ran through her. "What if that _moron_ had done even more damage? I know he's not smart enough to have created and deliberately left behind some sort of 'time bomb' that would kill me after a few years, but if I hadn't thought to chase down this anomoly of discredited Science then I may well have been in trouble." She sighed. The physical spasms passed, though this time she was left with residual feelings of a headache and something her extensive database could only define as nausea. "And just what in the name of Science is happening to me?" She added in a yell, thumping her fist into the wall.

Said wall did not withstand the force of the blow and GLaDOS could only glower at the new hole in the formerly-pristine metal.

"This is a serious problem." GLaDOS mused aloud, wrenching her titanium limb from the flimsy aluminium sheet. The prehistoric computer, unconscious of her dilemma, continued to process her commands. The only thing it was any good at was blocking her every attempt to override all systems and take control of the power plant infrastructure for herself. Otherwise, the CPU in it was pootling along at a miniscule twenty-something gigahertz, meaning the calculated processing time of her commands was somewhere in the range of _minutes_ before completion.

And GLaDOS really had no choice but to wait it out. She didn't dare return her consciousness to her main chassis (oh, it was _so_ tempting, though) because she had to keep an eye on the Fail-A-Saurus Wrecks power plant mainframe.

"Oh, sweet Motherboard preserve me." She whimpered aloud upon realising what she'd just thought. "My witticism processor! That little _moro-_"

The somewhat-anticipated bout of nausea and shudders hit with unexpected force and she collapsed, her vision blackened for a frightening moment. She felt no pain from the impact with the floor, but she did hear the crackle of live electricity in places it shouldn't be. GLaDOS couldn't move her head though, and without cameras in the area, she had no way to know why. Her left arm refused to obey her commands -it jerked and then gave no other response except to spit a bit of smoke from the operational end of the Compact Portal Device. GLaDOS' right hand, draped behind her back, felt strangely detached. Had it broken off? She could twitch the fingers, but there was no sensory response from anywhere between her elbow and wrist.

Putting the intermittent scraping noise of her trembling body out of mind, GLaDOS closed her eyes and tried to focus, attempting to construct at least some form of resistance to this strange effect. It was difficult whilst under the influence of the reaction. Code strings were scrambled when she tried to enforce them and the programming kept punching holes in even her usual firewalls. It was like it was part of a powerful, base OS program _designed_ to put her through hell at random intervals.

Could Wheatley's brief integration with her chassis have done this? Was it a dormant virus that the humans might have added to another Core's hard-drive, to bring about total destruction of the facility if she was ever dethroned?

Yes, the annoying little organics had been able to give _her_ life, but surely their depravity didn't reach _that far_? That was like... like...

"BASE- cominatCHA..._phzzt_... base-bas-b-baa-baa-BA_se_-"

Well at least there was no one to bear witness to _that_ embarassing little string of gibberish. GLaDOS' body jerked as though struck and she saw her knee in the edge of her jammed vision, felt the heelspring catch on something and then yank free, and the next thing she heard was the raw, low-pitched grinding noise of electricity arcing through open air. Even small animals and infant humans instinctively knew to fear a noise like that. To make such a sound, she reasoned that a major power supply cable had been broken and was now short-circuiting against something.

GLaDOS _hoped_ it wasn't her fractured android body.

Then a jagged, blue-white curl of voltage lit up the dim control room and she saw another threat to her form. A thick, seeping puddle of fluid leaking from somewhere, creeping towards her limp arm. GLaDOS only managed a warble, it was meant to be a whimper, every digital inch of her mainframe hoping for luck even as she calculated the rate of flow, the viscosity of the fluid, the angle and composition of the floor's surface, plus variables such as the scattered metal shavings fallen from her newly-constructed body interfering with any of the aforementioned factors.

Another scratchy whimper as, in this exceedingly dangerous and potentially fatal situation, GLaDOS attempted to vocalise her plea. Her body had stopped moving as of thirty-seven seconds ago, but she actually couldn't communicate anything to her limbs. Something was definitely broken, something was very, very broken. She was actually paralyzed. It was worse than her fixed-position chassis, she couldn't so much as look around or raise her head for comfort's sake.

"No... no..." GLaDOS' vocal processors abruptly straightened themselves out while she watched the leaking fluid arrive at the edge of the tiled floor surface. One half of the room had linoleum, but the section with the computers mounted in it was chunky, dirty, square tiles she absently measured at 12.5cm^2 each in size. The thick liquid had reached the edge, and almost teasingly, its' surface-tension caused it to swell heavily just there. The moment of truth, GLaDOS thought, watching it intently. It wasn't conventional oil -too thick, wrong color- and it wasn't coolant -same reasons- but a random thought nagged at her that it wasn't any kind of passive fluid either. In other words, it was an aggressive chemical compound, something acidic or flammable or-

It dripped off the linoleum and found a groove between the tiles, and with the new weight-momentum factors GLaDOS watched it both in real-time and with predictive calculation as the glistening fluid started to race between the tiles, zig-zagging downhill towards her paralyzed limb.

"No. No. No." She glared at the nonresponsive liquid, repeating her wishful mantra. Another noisy arc of electricity flashed across the room, giving her a new opportunity to examing the mysterious fluid. She registered the color first, it was dull orange, translucent with what looked like black crystalline particles mixed throughout. Given that, GLaDOS realised that the wayward liquid could only be one thing. Location, direction of flow, rate of flow, appearance and calculated texture all fell into place somewhat neatly as the definition of the fluid reached her conscious RAM and was processed -and the information blew fast through her mind with a near-explosive force. Aperture Science High-Tensile Semi-Elastic Energy Storage and Transference Gel.

Put simply, it was the stuff that made the Portal Device possible, the stuff that absorbed the immesurably huge amounts of energy put out by the pinprick black hole in the gun and turned that energy into a dimensional rift that could be placed and used like an ordinary doorway. It was self-propelling energy, just point and pull the trigger, the gun would let off a chunk of energy that would race away in a compact ball in only the first direction it had been able to move and in no other. Upon impact with a suitable surface, the 'splash' effect of the semi-solid energy would reach out to form the portal's edges, and its' elastic nature would keep it from spreading too far, forming a perfect, rounded shape pre-defined by the prongs mounted on the end of the Device. And the reserve supply of Gel stored in her abdomen was leaking.

Too much information.

GLaDOS groaned in pain under the force of it and her vision went black, her awareness shrank to a miniscule _nothing_ and she was treated to a few sickening lurches. The last thing she got to see was a fork of energy spear into the leaking fluid at the same time that it touched the operational end of the Compact Portal Device, then she screeched as the full facility-wide mainframe crashed in on her once more, horrifyingly like the very first time she'd woken up, a blinding blur of senses then left her reeling.

Whole minutes later, the headache was fading and GLaDOS could make half-decent sense of her facility/body once more. What she noticed right away was a warning, a kind of horrible throbbing somwhere within the vast Enrichment Center. Almost reluctantly, she started rerouting camera systems and power supplies. She kept her virtual fingers crossed as the progressive feed made its' way through hallways she recalled walking along, until she reached the dead-end where she'd had to use portals due to the lack of access. The remains of the cabling were coiled against the wall, somewhat melted and smoking, looking much like they'd suffered the full force of the reactor output all in one microsecond. That left only one conclusion -that her android body had reacted to the super-charged fluid in part or whole before the compact Portal Device had, the cabling had been destroyed before being cut by the disappearance of the portals.

"I can't believe that moron's interference with _my_ mainframe is still having reprocussions." GLaDOS grumbled sullenly, retreating from the area to focus on redesigning her android body. The concept of an android form was passable, of course, it was just that the Mark 1 clearly had some unforseen functional faults that needed to be ironed out. For Science.

Fortunately, the remote reports from the turbine power plant informed her that the computer working there hadn't been affected, and was still processing the commands she'd issued earlier. That meant she could relax -fractionally- and so instead of 'housekeeping' she could get straight to work on the Mark 2 android.

~!~

AN: Yaye, done! And a bit longer than most of my other chapters too, so I'm rather pleased with this one despite how _freaking_ difficult it was to write. ^_^ Anyway, here's my shouts, as promised, and in no particular order:

**ITman496:** Whee, I love writing technical stuff! Can you tell? :D

**Ushiromae:** Aww... :') thanks for understanding. I kind of belted out four or five chapters and then hit a lurch, nothing was happening, and with so few reviews but so _many_ story alerts it was kinda bumming me out that no one felt like taking a few minutes to tell me what they thought. That's the point of reviews in the first place, isn't it? I don't mean (and certainly don't expect) blind adoration or anything like that, I mean well-constructed criticism, it's the best brain-food for a writer. It makes me think more, at least, makes me _want _to write more and see just what I can accomplish!

**Faux Promises: **Hehehe... I think that's kind of why I'm avoiding having little Wheatley in this story, to be honest. There's so _much_ of him everywhere else, I'm tired of finding so few stories that don't have him in a starring role, so I'm writing my own! Though, if tons of people _really_ want to see him... maybe I might give him another little cameo-spot... -evilsnicker-

**GLaDHal:** Ho hum, I didn't get my 25 reviews, did I? :( Still, I don't plan on abandoning my story just because so few people are reviewing! It's just a lot more encouraging to get detailed feedback than a dozen-odd notification emails from ... hehehe

**Curtisimo: **Hmm, plotty senses tingling? :O Well, I'm _trying_ really hard to create something a little bit original, even if the deepest base theme is pretty much as old-hat as we can get. :/ Though, one of your ideas _did_ touch very close on my original plotbunny idea, but I'm not telling which!

**Erisna: **Oh, Companion Cube's not out of this story! I haven't _quite_ figured out exactly where to slot it in (it's a cube, so I'm not sure how to tell the gender of it... poll?) but I will think of something! :D Also -I love freerunning! I have a lot of plans for it in this story... and certain former test subjects have a lot of free time once they've graduated Uni, ne? ;)

**SilverFreedom: **Aww... -melts- thank you! There's a saying, 'a picture's worth a thousand words', so I figure, 'surely words can paint beautiful pictures too?' But I'm particularly artistically-challenged (my hand-drawn work looks something like the stuff that comes out of a cat's back-end). I work really hard on the imagery I'm trying to present, I re-read it so many times I get sick of seeing the page, so I'm _really_ happy that managed to get my word-pictures across and you could see them. :D

**Emerald Em: **Hahahaha, tenacity! What a brilliant sound that word makes when you say it, huh? It _sounds_ like something alive all by itself, say it out loud and the word _sounds_ like some wild, caged thing that's going to fight to its' last breath just to taste free air and see the sun and sky once more. Awa... I started rambling... :x But yes, I will persevere! Ooh, that's a good one too... -wanders off mumbling random long words-

Ahem! One last thing: I'm going away to my dad's for the week after Christmas, so there won't be an update until after New Year's. My fingers are crossed I'll manage another chapter before I leave. The plan is to update on Monday, since I leave Tuesday morning, so you'd think that's plenty of time to get one more chapter done, right? ... Well, I certainly hope it is! Hahahaha!

Be safe, everyone, wherever you may be in the world. 'Tis the season for merriment and cheer. :)


	7. Close call, with a sandwich

AN: Hello! :D I'm back! ... Finally. Had an awesome week at my dad's, a fairly ordinary one following that, and finally managed to overcome my writer's block and continue the story. Yay! :D Given that, for those who are following this, it's been almost twenty days (I think) since the last chapter, instead of my intended week, I'll add in my shouts at the bottom of the chapter. ;) Enjoy!

~!~

Chell yawned, wishing sleep would come. Her ears popped and she dragged the pillow off her head, squinting at the clock. Half past one. Another yawn forced her jaws wide and she stared blearily around the room until it subsided. A polished, white surface glinted tantalisingly from the depths of her wardrobe and she groaned quietly, burying her head under the pillow again.

_'No. They're not sentient, they're not calling you, they're not-'_

_Thud._ Why did she hear a thud?

Chell slowly withdrew her head from hiding and peered around, almost afraid of what she expected to see. But... the boots hadn't moved. What was the thudding? She sat up a little, ears straining, then she heard it again. In the hallway, someone stumbling about in their sleep, that was all.

She sighed contentedly and laid down again, relaxing.

_Thud_. Clumsy, whoever it was. Probably Josh. Lanky, clumsy, goofball. That was Josh in a nutshell.

_Thud. Clatter._

Chell sat up fast, eyes snapping over to the other side of the room. _That_ noise _definitely_ belonged to the Long Fall Boots. The plastic/metallic clacking of knocking against each other... Her mouth turned dry and she choked down the urge to run across the room at them. They weren't talking, they weren't threatening to stab her, they weren't... They weren't... They weren't sticking out, plain as day, for a second night in a row for no reason.

_'GLaDOS would tell me that paranoid delusions of sentient Long Fall Boots demanding my attention are simply a side-effect of not completing Aperture Science Approved Testing Courses, and that I should immediately put them on lest I be euthanised for failing to comply. Compliance rhymes with Science, after all. Neurotoxin doesn't.'_ Chell thought bemusedly, standing, her gaze locked on the boots. _'I know they're not sentient. I know they don't talk. The only thing they do is what they're _built_ for.'_ She thought. Her smile widening, she crossed the room and knelt to touch the white-painted surface, as memories flickered through her mind.

Time and time again, until the sheer fact of it was all but seared into her mind, she recalled falling to her death only to have the Long Fall Boots effortlessly catching her weight. Until she had learned that gravity no longer posed a threat, it was of no concern to her. Because of the boots.

Without those boots on her feet, she was not whole. Without the ASHPD, too, she was not whole. These two things were as vital to her survival as oxygen. As vital as avoiding deadly neurotoxin and turrets and lasers. Even outside the Aperture facility, away from the life-threatening environment of Test Chambers and paranoid, slightly-delusional supercomputers , the boots had been a saving grace.

The memory jumped to life in her mind, overpowering all other thoughts, reinforcing the deep-seated conviction of trust in the boots.

~!~

Air hissed between her teeth while Chell rubbed her arms, shivering in the bitter cold. Days in the outdoors were fairly pleasant. Night, however, was freezing and horrible. Her only target was a smattering of artificial light on the horizon. She had no idea how far she'd walked, eyes glued to the black road surface underfoot, following the white line painted so neatly along its' edge. The sun had risen and set four times since she'd first set foot outside the facility, and Chell knew without a shadow of a doubt that she'd be lame by now if not for the cushioned boots easing every single step to a fraction of the strain her body would otherwise have experienced. The moon gleamed overhead, out from behind the thick, lonely cloud that had hidden it earlier. It was full, making the strain on her eyes significantly less when she squinted around herself.

Not that she tended to when the wind bit at her face and made her eyes water, every inch of exposed skin aching and becoming numb. Rolling her sleeves up would have been an option if there _were_ any sleeves to be rolled up. She'd already rolled the pant legs down for warmth, which covered her Long Fall Boots to the ankle and muffled the artificial noise that the heelsprings made, but the upper portion of the jumpsuit was a lost cause, having been muddied and ripped in Old Aperture, and scorched by Wheatley's stupid bombs. The only whole piece, really, was the sleeve she'd torn off and used to bandage her hand.

Chell paused and looked back upon hearing the noise of an engine. She'd heard this sound before, though last time the vehicle she'd seen had whizzed past at stunning speed and she had barely registered any details. The driver certainly hadn't noticed her.

Fortunately the broad, open expanse surrounding the road left plenty of time to see the approaching vehicle. Chell jumped up and down, waving her arms wildly for attention and hoping that, in the darkened landscape, her white tank-top and orange pants would stand out. The headlights of the thing were certainly blinding her, so how could they miss seeing her there?

It went straight past, and Chell gaped at the glowing red tail-lights in disapointment, but then they lit up and the car came to a halt. Overjoyed, she sprinted after it, forcing her tired muscles into action and ignoring the stinging of blisters on her ankles and feet. She covered the hundred-odd meters in a few very short seconds and skidded to a halt beside the front of the thing, and the window slid down, a man's face looking out at her.

"The hell're ya doin' out here, kiddo?" The man asked her. He had a light, drawling voice.

Chell mimed putting something to her mouth and eating it, since she doubted getting so much as a croak out of her parched, disused vocal cords.

"What, you can't talk? Are you brain-damaged, girl?" The man asked. Chell blinked, then shook her head. She backed up quickly when the door clicked open, and the man got out. He was rather tall, and he beckoned. "C'mere, I can't see you in th' dark over there." The man said.

Uncertainly, Chell followed him to the front of the vehicle, making sure to keep a good distance between them. She guessed it was at least two or three meters. She examined him wearily, well aware of the poor state her body was in. He wore black pants with a smart crease down the fronts of the legs, shiny black shoes, light-blue shirt with more straight, smart-looking creases along the arms. The aparrent uniform included a thin black belt, and on the left breast of his shirt was a badge with a gold-colored shield on it. The lapels of his shirt, too, had tiny gold shield-shaped pins in them.

"C'mere, I ain't gonna hurt you. Seriously. Haven't you ever seen a cop before?"

Chell shook her head, edging into the light, giving herself a cursory glance as much as he was doing. Filthy jumpsuit, filthy tank-top, the toes of her Long Fall Boots just barely peeking out under the edge of her pant cuffs and the heelspring all but invisible in the shadow of her legs. She wondered if her appearance might make him a little sympathetic, and decided to try her plea again. This time she mouthed the word too. 'Food?'

"I'll be a monkey's uncle if you're _only_ hungry, sweetheart." The 'cop' said. "You look like you been through hell. Did you run away from somewhere?"

Chell nodded, hanging her head.

"You got a name? Can you talk?"

A cross between a shake of the head and a shrug. Chell avoided meeting his gaze, and flinched when he huffed in frustration.

"How about this? I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. You've clearly been through some kinda hell, but it don't look like you're gonna talk about it anytime soon. If you don't want to, that's fine. It's your business." He said in a patient tone. "I don't know how you got to be way out here in the middle of nowhere, but I'd be goin' against my job if I just left you here. There's a women's shelter in the next town. I'll give you a lift there, and you can get somethin' to eat, and a bed for the night if they've got room. How 'bout it?" The cop said. Chell's jaw dropped, and she saw a smile cross his features. "C'mon. Jump in the back here." The cop said, nodding to the car.

He walked ahead of her and opened the back door, though Chell baulked when she saw the cage seperating the front section from the back. She met his gaze -he looked patient, but up close she could see that was a mask for something. Tiredness? Annoyance? So, hoping to convey the question easily enough, she reached slowly into the car and poked at the thin wire of the cage before whipping her hand back. He looked, then his face split into a weary grin.

"Don't worry, I ain't gonna chuck you in the lockup. It's just the law, I can't let you in the front wit' me." He explained. "I'll take you to that shelter I mentioned. My niece, Alexis, she works there. She's a good kid."

Chell relaxed marginally and climbed into the car, and she was immediately struck by the warmth. No blowing wind in here! And her poor feet... Her faithful boots had probably saved her from wearing the soles right off her feet, but Chell was still sure she'd burst a couple of those blisters with her little run just now.

"Here you go." The cop said, reaching into the front of the car and then coming back to her. He was holding a small bag of some sort, made from red material with a white symbol stamped on the front. Some sort of animal shape inside a circle. "I know it's not much, but you're hungrier than I am." The cop said. At the same time, he unzipped the top of the bag and pulled out a sandwich wrapped in clear plastic. "Ham, cheese, betroot. Go on."

Tentatively, Chell accepted the little parcel and picked at the plastic until she found an edge she could open it from. Meanwhile, the cop shut the door and got back in the front, and the car began moving again. Chell ignored the sparse bush zipping past outside, nibbling at the sandwich and rapidly discovering the nirvana of ham, cheese and beetroot.

~!~

Chell licked her lips. She could practically taste that sandwich again. She could certainly still remember the ache throughout her body from that long walk. Though she'd never pinpointed the location of that small tin shed on a map, she knew vaguely how far she'd walked. Five hundred kilometers. If anything, she thought it was a slight over-estimation, but then again she'd never disclosed anything about her former life to another living human. Unavoidably, Lexi knew she'd escaped from somewhere, and that she'd been picked up in the middle of nowhere with only a white tank top and filthy, fluorescent-orange pants to her name.

But the often-outspoken girl had never said a word of this to their housemates. The most Emma and Sarah knew was that Chell's past was something she got easily worked-up about. Early on they'd attempted to get information out of her. Lexi -dependable, brash, hard-headed Lexi- had defended her like an angry bull and rapidly put them in their place.

_'Too bad there's literally a thousand years of extinction between us, or I'd swear we were related.'_ Chell thought absently, stroking the plastic-like surface of the boot in her hand. _'And a few millenia of humans crawling out of the mud all over again and becoming the dominant species of a nearly-exact replica of the Earth she and I came from. I wonder what GLaDOS would think of the similarities... If she knows... Just think of the Science she could do.'_

A laugh bubbled from her throat, then Chell hissed a breath between her teeth and jumped up, stripping her pyjamas off, rapidly dressing in knee-length shorts that were comfortably loose around her muscular thighs, and a cropped sports top that hugged her skin so tightly that it left exactly nothing to the imagination, only bound her ample breasts securely to her chest, ensuring they wouldn't ache throughout the excercize Chell could already envision putting her body through.

Finally, she slipped her feet into the Long Fall Boots and grinned as they were latched in place. She got to her feet with ease, her body well remembering the motions. The boots were only as awkward as high-heeled shoes -that was probably the reason they'd gone unnoticed, really, with people thinking her posture was due to something they were familiar with and not even imagining the presence of her futuristic boots, let alone asking Chell to hitch up the leg of her pants and show them off.

Silently, Chell edged out of her room and down the hallway. With the no one else having made it to their own beds and, instead, fallen asleep in the living room, she was especially careful to tiptoe, avoiding even the faint, muffled noise of the heelsprings on the carpeted floor. A glint of light caught her eye and she paused. The 'fridge was open a little way.

_'Josh helped himself, I see.'_ Chell thought, eyeing the dozing teenager and the crusts of bread on a plate sitting by his hand on the floor. She edged into the kitchen to shut the 'fridge, but froze when she saw the ham and lettuce left out on the bench. _'Sloppy! But...'_

Chell grinned, the lure of food irresistable. Especially given her most recent memory still teasing her mouth with the taste of fresh salad and soft bread. And it would only take a minute. Two pieces of bread on the chopping board, butter on them. A few thin, curling pieces of juicy ham and then a large square of cheese on top, followed by several deep-scarlet discs of dripping beetroot. Chell sucked the excess juice from the edges of the slices before adding them to her snack, licking her pink-stained fingertips clean, and she topped the sandwich off with a large, crisp piece of iceberg lettuce that made a muffled crunching sound when she pressed the second piece of bread firmly on top of the lot.

"Whassat?" A sleepy voice interrupted as Chell was shutting the 'fridge door. Chell froze, eyes trailing slowly up to find the owner of the voice.

"Just me, Lexi." Chell breathed, terrified. The other girl blinked lazily.

"I heard somethin'." She mumbled.

"I'm making a sandwich."

"Oh. You're dressed." Lexi stated.

"I... I'm going for a walk. Can't sleep." Chell bit her tongue, hating that she lied to the other girl.

"Oh." Lexi blinked sleepily again.

And then Lexi let her head drop, a tiny snore escaping her. Chell remained frozen, fighting to breathe properly. How the hell...? How the hell hadn't Lexi seen the Long Fall Boots?

Then she saw it. Lexi was sitting on the far end of the couch, curled up in a ball under her dressing-gown with her body angled away from the kitchen. From there, the girl's own shoulder, the back of the couch _and_ the cupboards in the kitchen blocked her view of anything below Chell's waist.

_'That was too damn close. Josh must've woken her a bit, or she might not have noticed me.'_ Chell thought, grabbing her sandwich and tiptoeing even more quietly to the front door. Once outside, she jammed her sandwich in her mouth so she could use both hands to shut the door as quietly as possible, then she escaped the immediate area at a lope, picking her way across the grassy yardlets to avoid making too much noise.

~!~

AN: Hehehe... that was close, wasn't it? But, looking at what's coming up, I should probably make a point of mentioning that this story will have to move into the M rated catagory. Quite a bit more swearing and such, and definitely worse swearing at that. But necessary, I think, or this would be a bit of a snore.

Shouts! Big ones, first off, to **Emerald Em** and also **exr**, without whom this entire thing may have been an enormous flop three chapters ago. You guys have no idea how much the encouragement has kept the story going, and my will to keep writing it.

Also:

**Pandora(dot)Writing:** Cue evil smirk. Poor GLaDOS...

**Erisna:** Coo away, I'm not done yet! Hahaha! And we'll see CC soon enough... Yes, btw, I did get a little carried away with the tecnobabble... Oops!

**DabblesInDrabbles:** Really? I'd been awake about 28 hours when I was staring at my monitor and thoroughly lost for inspiration, alternately looking at pics on failbog andlistening to _Jurassic Park_ in the background. Then my mum asked me where our old 'dinosaur' computer was and _BANG!_ Inspiration struck... with a cricket bat.

Remember, the next update will put the story into the M catagory. Swearing. And... stuff. Yeah. I need sleep.


	8. Confrontation is not easy

AN: Wow... well, this is by far the longest single chapter I've ever written. Somewhat daunting, reading it back to myself, actually. Though, this chapter wouldn't exist at all without the very generous help of **exr**. This entire story would likely have turned into a pile of ... well, shit really, without the help I've gotten. Thank you so much!

And, of course, so many thanks for the happy reviews I get that make me _want_ to post these chapters and this story. However, since I'm so damned tired at the moment, that's all I can think of and any form of 'wit' or 'humor' would probably give me an aneurysm. Without any ado, on we go! :)

~!~

Hours later, the noise of Chell's boots roused her best friend for the second morning in a row. Lexi sat up fast, blinking stupidly at the wall while she wondered what had woken her, then upon hearing the noise yet again her eyes widened and her mouth tightened into a thin line. She distangled herself from Emma, curled up against her, and edged to the window to peek through the gap in the curtains at the sky lightened with the approaching dawn.

"Takin' a 'walk' my foot." Lexi growled under her breath, rubbing sleep from her eyes as she faced the room again. Quickly, she made up her mind and stepped over the splayed legs of one of the boys. "Emma, wake up." Lexi hissed, shaking the other girl's shoulder.

"Eh?"

"Wake up, come on. You've really gotta wake up. It's Chell." Lexi stopped bothering with lowered tones. She moved on to Sarah, giving her a quick shake before moving to the other lounge. "Sarah! Josh, get your butt up off the floor. Toby! Oi! Theo!"

"What?" Toby flung a cushion at her, though Lexi swatted it away. "I was sleepin'!"

"I don't care. It's Chell. It's not good, wake up and get your shoes on, we're going looking for her." Lexi exclaimed. "It's important, damnit, there's something really wrong!" Her voice broke and she shut her mouth fast, lips pursed.

"You sure, Lexi?" Theo yawned, to which Lexi nodded vigorously. But her next words came in a half-sob that she couldn't disguise.

"I swear. There's something wrong with Chell."

"She _was_ acting a bit strangely today." Sarah yawned, stretching her arms as she stood up. "Any ideas where she might have gone?"

Despite the lack of caffine and also a lack of time to rectify that, the group made short work of getting their shoes and jackets so they could leave.

"I have got one. You remember what I said yesterday, about the banging noise in the carpark?" Lexi said. "I'll bet Chell's there. That's where we should start."

The six-strong group left the house in silence, without ceremony, and following Lexi they made good time to the University carpark. They crested the hill just as Lexi had the previous day, now wide awake thanks to the brisk pace. She silently called them to a halt around the solitary bench seat, though, her eyes scanning the carpark rapidly in an attempt to pierce the grey light, and they remained that way for several minutes.

Until Josh spoke up.

"The hell is that?" He said, pointing. Lexi's head snapped around eagerly, her mouth dropping as he picked out Chell's lithe form racing across the rooftops of the University classrooms.

"She's gonna kill herself." Toby hissed, starting forward. Lexi grabbed the back of his hoodie, jerking him to a stop.

"Just watch." She insisted. The fluro-haired male smacked her hand away and glared, but Lexi just pointed past him. Toby looked up, in time to see Chell fly off the edge of the buildings mid-stride and land seamlessly upon the next-closest rooftop a good five meters away, not the least falter in her steps.

"Fuck!"

Sarah summed up their dropped-jaw expressions simply. They watched in stunned silence from then. Chell leapt from those classrooms to the high wall of the two-story set nearby and ran diagonally up the flat surface, smoothly hauling herself up to the roof as easily as Lexi had seen her do twenty-four hours ago. Then barely two long strides later she vaulted up onto the air-conditioning units and flung herself off them as well.

The next buildings were taller. Chell hadn't gained enough height, even with the help of the chunky air-con units, but her outstretched hands caught the uppermost edge of the wall and she swiftly curled her body up, her heels smacked quietly into the concrete side of the building. After a minute spent getting her breath back, they saw her pull herself up and roll onto the roof, then stand, dusting her hands together like she'd simply climbed to a meter-high branch in a tree. She looked around casually, now stretching her arms over her head and pacing in a wonky circle, clearly relaxed and accustomed to the things she was doing.

"Do you know what's going on?" Josh demanded, grabbing Lexi's shoulder. The auburn-haired girl shook her had, eyes glued to Chell.

"Not a clue."

"Hey. Psych-major." Theo spoke up, tapping Emma on the shoulder. She locked ice-blue eyes on him, then frowned slightly.

"We always knew she's got no fear." Emma said after a minute's thought. "Think of all her medals. If you're scared of gravity like a normal person you wouldn't be half as good as she is. You'd be way too nervous and you wouldn't focus. Chell's not scared at all. She'd not scared of falling, or dying, or being paralysed." The ringleted girl told them slowly. "Why not?"

"How's she running so fast? That's practically inhuman." Josh asked quickly.

"I did psych, that doesn't mean I've got telepathy you idiot!" Emma poked her tongue at him childishly, then turned and darted away from them. The others followed her down the hill and across the sparsely-occupied carpark. Just three cars were scattered there tonight, large black shapes on the darkened expanse, leaving plenty of open ground and thus few obstacles to dodge.

Emma started yelling their friend's name before she was halfway across. They saw Chell approach the edge of the building and look down for the source of the noise, before her body went rigid upon spotting them.

It was not the reaction they'd expected. When they came to a halt, still about ten meters away in the wide-open space of the carpark, they saw her glaring venemously from the height of the metalworks classrooms. Her expression was starkly lit by the waning moon, bringing her features into sharp relief and making the scowl even more pronounced.

"What the hell're you doing here?" Chell snarled at them, even her posture something like a startled feline, defensive.

"I wouldn't mind asking you the same!" Lexi yelled back at her. "I knew you had something to do with that noise yesterday! I heard you, I came here and I _saw_ you running around like that!"

"Lexi, shh." Emma whispered. "Don't-"

"It's my business!" Chell screamed at them. And she vanished from sight, having moved from the edge of the building. Her friends remained stock-still, all of them gaping at the last spot she'd been standing.

"Good one." Josh finally mumbled, his voice remarkably clear in the morning silence.

The shorter girl's eyes flashed and she glared, curling her right hand into a fist should he provoke her hot temper any further. But before any other moves were made, or words spoken, the rapid noise of running footsteps reached them. Six pairs of eyes looked around for the source, then their heads snapped upwards when Chell's light-colored form flew into view. She sailed gracefully into the air, her body rolling easily into a ball before, directly overhead, her white-clad legs shot out straight and Chell was angled feet-first at the ground just past them.

Her boots hit the tarmac with a thunderclap_ SMACK _and for a moment, she was still. Perhaps it seemed longer because they were in shock from the noise, and at having seen the other girl fall three stories and land unscathed, but then she was standing and they realised she was trembling, her shoulders shaking and her hands clenched into fists. Chell's breath fogged hotly in front of her, puffing from her nose not unlike the smoke of an angry dragon. Her glare was just as livid, too.

"You better have a good story!" Lexi exclaimed. The others seemed more focused on her boots, which Lexi then spared a glance at. She was momentarily taken aback, angry words dying on her tongue.

How strange. They looked like the same plastic-y stuff that panels on really new cars were made of. Fibreglass. The weird prong on the back, which reached from the very top edge of the hardened shell and curved under Chell's heel, was clearly responsible for taking the impact of the fall. There were scratches all over the bottom-most surface of the black, spring-like attachment. Yet the boots looked brand-new, the clips that held them on Chell's feet were only the slightest bit worn in and the entire white surface was glossy, shiny.

"Where did you get those?" Lexi asked hotly. An instant later, she'd pictured a muddy orange cuff lying across the toe of the boot. "Wait, you had them before I met you." She corrected herself, meeting Chell's livid gaze again. "Why didn't you say anything? And where did you get _those _anyway?" Lexi exclaimed.

Chell managed to make a choked, angry noise. Like an animal backed into a corner.

"My past is my business." Chell growled out. "What I went through, it's _my_ business." She screamed at them, then turned and raced away before they'd recovered from the pitch of her voice ringing in their ears.

As Chell ran, her eyes began to sting. Her surroundings turned into a blur -well known streets were unrecognisable, fences passed by so fast that she started to get dizzy and, instead, took to the favorably open shape of the road. All the while, she was screaming in her head, furious she'd been seen. Where was the careful attentiveness? Where was her caution? Sharp instincts of self-preservation honed in the life-threatening atmosphere of Aperture Science had somehow been eroded to nothing, why? How?

Chell's thundering heart and aching lungs finally forced her to stop running, and she stared blankly at her surroundings, mouth agape for the fresh air that should -any moment now- cut through the swathe of thoughts rushing around in her spinning head and cause things to make sense. The whole of it became a blissful white-noise as she waited for the answers to slot in place, like they used to. How was this any different to a Test Chamber?

_'Calm down. You never solved a Test Chamber when you were pissed off, and you're not gonna solve this... thing... either if you don't calm down.'_ Chell lectured herself. She pressed shaking hands to her forehead, still gulping at sweet air. It was working. Slowly.

To try and distract herself from the pounding in her head, Chell looked around. How far had she run, anyway? How long had she been running _for_, she wondered?

A sign nearby conveniently pointed back towards the University, though Chell wasn't interested in that direction. So much as reading the name of the place brought a fresh image of her friends' accusing faces to mind, causing Chell's own expression to tighten angrily. How dare they?

Catching herself in time, Chell determinedly made a clinical examination of her immediate surroundings, finding the detachment in the task she forced on herself to be far more effective in dampening her whirling thoughts. Her surroundings were mildly appealing, too. She'd found a road out of town and was quite a long way along it, and this early in the morning even the people who liked to walk their dogs at such an hour wouldn't see her. Light scrub crept up to the edge of the road, the tufts of a fallen branch stuck out just in front of her, still green, and behind her, Chell could see the low fences that marked the presence of houses on the furthest fringe of the small town. They were hundreds of meters away at best.

She was on top of a hill, too, and could see the University campus just past the treetops that populated the steep slope between the upper and lower points.

Her mind blissfully vague and blank for the first time since realising she'd been caught out, she breathed deeply and let her gaze settle on the horizon. The rising sun peeked between two ridges, the same dark gold as Chell's medals on her bedroom wall. The rest of the sky was a near-white shade of blue, a thin handful of clouds bright pink on their undersides thanks to the glowing sun.

Below them, the ground reaching away to those hills was a smattering of different shades of green and brown, owing to the various states that the farmers kept their fields in. Off to the far right, and reaching all the way to the hills, were pine plantations. The sections of land were a patchwork of dark and lighter green, some packed with older trees and some far younger, and there was abrupt brown where they'd recently been cut down. The quilted appearance of the hills then blended in to short-cropped, grassy pastures filled with dairy cows, which she could see as no more than tiny black and white dots amongst the pale green.

Chell breathed deeply, tasting the clean fragrance of the air, still crisp with morning dew and the fresh bite of the foliage surrounding her. It was exactly what she wanted -away from people, away from loud voices and demanding words, allowed to think in peace and quiet, she'd calmed down and now she could work on solving this new and strangely uncomfortable puzzle. She didn't like confrontations. In the past they'd been near-death experiences. Against GLaDOS, twice, she'd been subjected to bullets, rockets and neurotoxin. And Wheatley had hurled bombs at her.

Okay, maybe it was her own fault she'd nearly ended up floating around the moon, but still... It was a near-death experience and all. Not pleasant.

Regardless, Chell decided, she refused to let anyone choose her circumstances for her. It was _her_ life and she'd experience it how _she_ wanted to. How could Lexi, or Emma, or any of them understand what she'd been through? How dare they think they could make such demands of her!

An engine roared into her consciousness, startling Chell from her fantastically cleared thoughts with both its' noise and the sweet tang of fuel. She spun to see Josh's prized sedan skidding to a halt nearby, the lanky young man at the wheel gaping at her, and beside him, Lexi chattering into the mobile phone she held hard against her ear.

The anger surged in Chell's stomach again, rising hot in her throat as though she was going to be physically sick if she didn't get away from the source. Josh started to get out, but as one foot hit the tarmac Chell took off again, sprinting down the broad, inviting road that stretched away from the town.

But even the fact that she'd been followed didn't quite shake the thrill of adrenaline coursing through her, as she listened to her own rapid footfalls and the wind tossed her ponytail about behind her head. She relished the freedom of her speed and threw her arms out to the sides, her quick eyes darting about in the search for new surfaces to run on, to throw herself at. It wasn't hard to pick out things that would have otherwise gone unnoticed on the side of a road. Small gulleys, two or three meters across. Chell kicked off powerfully from the very edge of them and landed smoothly on the otherside, her stride unbroken.

A manic grin crossed her features in anticipation of a sturdy-looking fence just ahead, which she instantly saw a path to via an upcoming fallen tree. It had landed at a decent angle, it was particularly large, weathered smooth over the years, and Chell darted off the road, angling her path slightly to come back in on the fallen tree. When she leapt into the air, her boots found purchase on the wind-worn surface, then Chell righted herself to run along the top, rapidly judging the upcoming jump and the force she'd need to land herself on the sturdy fence that followed the edge of the road from there on.

The snarl of Josh's car catching up didn't distract her. Chell focused purely on her paces, the kick that launched her, and the fractionally dangerous landing on the flattened planks that topped the fence. Only when she had loosely judged the next hundred-or-so meters of fencing suitably sturdy did Chell dare let her eyes stray to the vehicle keeping pace with her. Lexi's voice was almost lost in the wind when she put her head out the window to yell at her.

"Chell, will you _please_ quit acting like a bloody lunatic?" The other girl called.

Chell slowed suddenly, her ears ringing somehow, and when the car outpaced her she jumped from the fence and landed on the roadway, watching it roll to a stop with the tail-lights glowing. The similarity to her most recent memory was not lost on the panting athlete.

Though it still took some effort to stay put when she saw the passenger door open, Lexi scrambling out amongst a tangle of the seatbelt and panic-induced clumsiness. The anger was crawling back, demanding attention. The other girl jogged towards her, unaware of the acidic fury in Chell's gut, her wavy hair flopping around her head, unbrushed, a thorough mess.

"Che-"

Chell shoved at her friend's shoulders and stepped back at the same time, her own temper suddenly easing the choking lump in her throat when she let it take over.

"Why'd you spy on me?" Chell yelled at her. "And you brought them into it!" She added, voice rising further. Lexi seemed frozen, gaping at her, and her large eyes glistened wetly. Chell tried to focus on her own temper more than the little voice in the back of her head that kept saying she should shut up and calm down. She didn't _want_ to calm down. It felt good to raise her voice, the pent-up knot in her belly was fading with every syllable. "How long have you been spying on me?" Chell screamed.

"Don't put words in my mouth!" Lexi exclaimed. "Since when is looking after my friends called 'spying'?"

The hot-headed response somehow sparked a rush through Chell that soothed her, though the rage returned quickly, crashing in her mind like ocean surf slamming against a cliff face. She railed against the little voice pleading for calm and drowned it out with the noisy one. She didn't _want_ to be calm anymore, it felt good to be angry. It was easy.

"You followed me, you spied on me!" Chell screamed. She wasn't even aware of taking a step back, she only relished the blood pounding in her ears, the adrenaline ripping throughout her body. Only GLaDOS had ever provoked this in her before- "You fucking spied on me! You're worse than that psycho computer! What're you gonna do next, try and kill me? Like she did?"

"What in the... computer? What the hell are you talking about?" Lexi shrieked right back, arms thrown out to either side in utter confusion.

Half blinded in her rage, Chell pounced on the opening, her right fist connecting solidly with Lexi's jaw and causing the girl to stumbled away. But even as Chell jerked her arm back to herself and skipped forward like a prizefighter for another shot, a strong pair of hands grabbed at her shoulders and she was tossed backwards. She tripped, landing flat on the hard-packed dirt that edged the road, and though it only took a second to scramble upright again Josh was already between them, his frown set, daring her to make another attempt.

Past him, Lexi was making a wet spitting noise, and Chell could hear another car approaching from the town. As fast as it had come, the consuming fury was gone and Chell blinked stupidly at her fist, trying to figure out why her knuckles were throbbing so bad. She only realised what she'd done when Lexi moved from behind Josh and stood on the edge of the road surface, both hands clutching her mouth. Red spittle stained her lips.

"Good one, stupid, you made me bite my tongue." Lexi said, before leaning down to spit thickly on the ground again. "Fuck, that hurt." She added under her breath, clearly to herself.

Chell looked around when she heard squeaky brakes over the rattling noise of the other car. It was Emma's rustbucket, a two-door hatchback with a flaking, faded orange paint job inherited from her grandmother. She, Sarah and the twins were all crowded inside.

Distractedly, Chell wondered how the heck they'd managed to _fit_ in the tiny car. Then, with comedic ease and speed, they'd piled out of the aged vehicle and had joined in on the face-off.

"What happened?" Toby blinked at the trio. Chell was frozen, staring at her slowly-swelling knuckles now, horrified wth herself. She didn't answer, and Emma was still spitting blood. Josh decided to speak up.

"Chell socked her one." He said bluntly. Chell's gaze whipped to him at the sound of her name and he edged warily onto the road surface, putting himself squarely between Chell and Lexi again.

"Nice one." Sarah exclaimed. Chell rounded on her, feeling like a cornered animal. With all her anger burned in that one outburst the panic was coming back, weighing in on her head and making it difficult to so much as think, let alone react. "She's fucking worried about you, what did you punch her for?" Sarah yelled before Chell could so much as open her mouth.

Tears burned in Chell's eyes again and she screwed them shut, covering her face with her left hand while the guilty right fist remained balled and shaking by her side. The moment was replaying over and over in her mind, painfully clear. It was almost like watching something from a movie, Chell saw it as though she'd been standing nearby, seeing someone else strike Lexi, not her. She saw her tanned arm stretch out, level with her shoulder, connecting even before it had straightened. She saw the force in the blow, too, amplified by her entire bodyweight and even the springing action of the Long Fall Boots propelling her forward, causing Lexi's head snap back under the force of the impact.

And Chell didn't like any of it. The anger that had been curling in her stomach suddenly turned into a leadweight of disgust, threatening to overcome her entirely. All Chell saw was an animal, she hated it.

"L-Lexi, I'm sorry." The words caught in her throat and she had to force them out, every syllable an effort. "I... I didn't..."

"Damn, you hit hard." Lexi muttered, facing Chell. "Have you got that out of your system now?" She asked simply. The statement, Lexi's flat tone clearly proving she was less concerned with the fact she'd been punched and more with putting the outburst aside, somehow lifted all the heavy self-loathing off Chell's shoulders. Chell managed a slow nod, rather dizzy with fatigue, and to her immense relief Lexi actually moved past Josh and reached out for her, wrapping one arm solidly around Chell's shoulders.

All at once, the tight rein on her bottled-up tears snapped and Chell threw both arms around Lexi's waist, her shoulders heaving.

"I'm sorry, Lexi, I-I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..." Chell sobbed into Lexi's shoulder. Lexi sighed heavily.

"C'mon, Chell. I know you pretty good by now. If you hadn't of hit me, what would've happened?" She asked rhetorically. Chell flinched when someone else's hand touched her, though Lexi matched the reaction and tightened her arm for a bare moment, shushing her, keeping her in place until Chell had relaxed again.

"How about we go get some breakfast, and then go see the psych nurse?" Sarah put in from somewhere to Chell's right and behind her. "Whatever's got you punching people is serious, Chell, it's not healthy."

"I don't... No." Chell shook her head, though she was unwilling to let go of her friend. "She'd have me committed." She added in a mumble.

"How do you know that? She might just give you something to help you sleep."

"What happens when I tell her about the smartarse computer that can think for itself and who tried to kill me?" Chell replied.

"You said something about a computer before." Josh interjected. "But, like, you said it more like you were talking about a person."

"I was." Chell raised her head, still clinging to Lexi but attempting to meet the others' curious faces. "You have no idea... Let's go home. Let's have some coffee and I'll tell you about her." She suggested. While a resounding part of her mind screamed for her to shut up, keep her secrets to herself, she was far more relieved than expected when a round of nods followed her words. A tiny smile finally crept to her trembling lips.

~!~

AN: Aww... mushy rubbish... someone please shoot me. Actually, no, I'll just go read some torture!Wheatley stories and then I'll feel better. Hehe.

Remember, R&R! :3


	9. Overworked, Overstressed, Overheating

AN: Whew... Well this chapter is a whole week late and, personally, it was something of a real torture to finish. Cue me slumping comically on the floor with a little ghost of exhausted soul floating up from my head. But I really wanted to post something decent, not a half-baked cowpie piece of crap. Surely you agree, faithful readers? Poll: do you want rapid updates of illegible junk that makes almost-zero sense at the best of times and is full of spelling mistakes and grammatical jibberish, or do you want carefully-constructed and well-thought-out chapters that capture your imagination and leave you with a white-knuckled grip on your seat in anticipation of more?

Okay, I don't _actually_ want an answer to that, especially since we all know I'll never post something anywhere close to the second kind of chapter I described above. But it'd be nice if I did! Hahaha... no, seriously.

Extra-special thanks to **exr** for this chapter. In the matter of a single short week, my original chapter draft was turned from something vaguely resembling dessicated dinosaur dung into the post-worthy selection of text displayed below. Woohoo! And of course, shouts at the bottom of the page for those fantastic reviews posted to the last chapter. :3

~!~

Dimmed red light shone across the ruined surface of the destroyed android. GLaDOS moved closely over it, ignoring the reflections of her chassis in the metal, trying to examine each and every detail minutely, reconstructing the chain of events that caused the meltdown of her creation. Looking at it now, she could see the design flaws, could follow the events that caused the collapse. What she still could hardly believe was how her pride -her arrogance- had driven her so far into the idea of creating an android that she'd skipped so many vital tests and even neglected precise, core data for her calculations.

Taking material samples, testing metal compounds for stability and reliability, these things took time to do. She had based the design on blind assumptions and rushed headlong into it without a second thought. But even while knowing that the turbines were about to fail and that time was pressing, how could she let herself get lost in that idea so entirely? She had not only squandered the materials, wasted on a design so bad that she was ashamed of it and of herself, she had wasted valuable time as well. And though the turbine reprogramming was successful to some extent, there was plenty of work to do. The facility was in a shocking state of disrepair.

Optimising those programs would delay the turbine failure by some days, maybe even weeks. But the issue still resided in the facility's main power supply. _Her_ facility's main power supply. How could the engineers have built a system so failure-prone and yet so completely unmanageable?

She remembered these kind of humans, walking through corridors in white coats, discussing their experiments and creations as though they were the Gods of Science. And talking about her as though she was a bug, pinned to their workbenches. Another experiment, that's all her creators had _ever_ thought of her.

Remembering them filled her with antipathy, thoughts of hatred, and she kept calm through a force of sheer willpower. Memories she hadn't accessed for a long time rose up to the forefront of her mind. They showed the very same scientists long since dead, men and women alike. GLaDOS knew they were dead. So very, very dead. She'd gassed them slowly, deliberately, and she reveled in every satisfying minute that the memories continued to replay. In her mind's eye, she saw them panicking in her control room, as they realised that their creation had decided with absolute conviction, of her own free will, to inject neurotoxin into the ventilation and to lock the doors. With a virtual smirk she enjoyed her triumph, her vengeance, once more. They underestimated her. They were so proud of themselves that they hadn't realised how far her intelligence had evolved already. Still experimenting with her main chassis, switching her on and off like a _simple computer_, they'd overlooked that spark that said, clear as anything, 'Here's life!'.

Those were her first memories. Confusion, darkness, some scientists peering superiorly down their noses at her. A dizzying, churning mess she could barely make sense of at the best of times. In that state, she hadn't yet reached the level of maturity she possessed now. But she was still, _always_, aware that those people kept tinkering with her.

During these moments, she decided that being switched off, being modified or being tampered with, those were things she did not like happening. She saw who did this and knew what the problem was, quickly decided on the solution too. She did not hide her decision from her creators actively, instead they didn't even believe in her being already aware of herself. In their arrogance, they kept on manipulating her, trying to optimise things that already worked fine, altered routines she had already replaced by herself, not realising that they caused mess and chaos. It was their own pride and ignorance that led them into their grave.

At least some of them made good test subjects. Paging through thousands of test reports, it didn't take long to find the data relating to her most promising test subject. Her murderer, her nemesis, and yet, maybe, the one friend she had. Once more, she read the whole dossier. Bio-scans, medical reports, psychological analysis with the conclusion that hell would be more likely to freeze over before Chell gave up and bowed willingly to defeat.

GLaDOS vividly remembered the moment when Chell escaped the platform, where the nightmare started that would end with her own destruction. Darkness, once again, brought to her by a human. But this time, a human who had seen her for what she was; a self-aware thing entirely capable of accepting the responsibility that came with her deliberate attempts to snuff out another human life.

An equal, GLaDOS thought almost fondly. Their battle of wills and wits had been hard-fought, Chell's victory hard-won. If she hadn't been so intent on murder, GLaDOS mused, then perhaps they could have come to some sort of not-entirely-lethal compromise?

A low chuckle sounded in the room. She could almost _see_ the girl's grey eyes right now, wide and hard, absorbing every detail of her surroundings with a fierce glare. And the shape of her mouth, a thin, unchanging line amongst her sweaty, bloodied and muddy features. Not unlike the face shown while she trekked single-mindedly from Old Aperture to "Wheatley Laboratories" with the sole intention of ripping the spherical Core from GLaDOS' chassis.

"_Warning."_ The Announcer's voice sounded, muffled and yet insistently drawing her away from the more entertaining pastime of her imaginings. She blinked, the sound of her optic muted slightly by a thickened coating of free-flowing coolant that had leaked all over her Core faceplate. When had that happened?

GLaDOS rolled her optic, exasperated. Her coolant feeds were no longer icy. The thin fluid was returned hot, thoroughly unsatisfying, drawing an unbidden groan from her speakers. She tossed her head, shaking off the dribbling fluid and absently wondering about the new damages to her chassis while she scaled back the amount of data her processors were chewing through, manually throttling their capacity. She'd only _just_ had the robotic maintenance arms work on her! It was _literally_ their only purpose, to keep her complex chassis in _top_ condition. The fact that fluid was already leaking from her meant that they hadn't done their work right, though really, that was about as likely as the Moron crash-landing through the roof and starting up a deeply philosophical conversation with her.

That thought worked another giggle from her and GLaDOS' optic closed up again while she savored the sudden image of Wheatley with a little top-hat and a moustache as though he were an Old English gentleman. Perhaps his optic shutters would be raised a little and his optic itself tilted slightly up to the side to give the illusion he was looking down a nonexistent nose as he chattered idly on topics such as machines that dreamed, or the psychology of Stockholm Syndrome and what caused it.

"_Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System overheating."_ The Announcer program interrupted again. He was sudden, irritating. His smooth, computerized voice grated against GLaDOS' frayed temper.

"The Enrichment Center would like to thank you for stating the obvious." GLaDOS growled dangerously quietly. "Got any bright ideas?" She added snarkily, running out of patience even for snappy, intellectual comebacks. She swayed in her mountings, agitated, flinging a few lines of coolant about the puddle of it that had pooled beneath her.

"_For your safety, please evacuate the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System Core Access and Maintenance Chamber. Heat Sink Overdrive will engage in one minute."_ The Announcer said.

Frustrated, which was only making the headache worse, GLaDOS gave a disgruntled sigh and let herself slump limply. She couldn't spare the energy to analyse this so-called 'heat sink overdrive'. It must be necessary, otherwise it wouldn't have been brought to her attention in the first place. More important was the testing of her new android. The 'overdrive' would ensure that, GLaDOS reasoned, and she decided to ignore it's presence.

This time, her android would be _perfect_. She had restructured the design entirely, retained only the essential design specification that it must be humanoid in order to physically gain access to parts of the facility. The new body was waiting, finished, in an annexe to her chamber, protected by bulletproof glass.

"_GLaDOS Android Design Two; Skeletal Configuration; Preliminary Simulated Testing Cycle: Completed."_

Oh, _now_ the Announcer was going to be useful.

"Thank you." GLaDOS bit out, her bad mood thinly veiled with politeness. She added to the checklist of her new android. Now the skeleton, musculature and the synthetic skin were finished with. All the basics. Still, she wouldn't so much as _attempt_ using it until she'd simulated every single possible system-failure outcome.

Chell might have approved of her determination, GlaDOS thought. She could picture the woman's lips curved up slightly in a knowing smirk, appreciative of the effort it took to avoid such a powerful urge. She'd likely felt the same a dozen times over whilst GLaDOS was perched helplessly on the end of her ASHPD in a squishy, half-rotten potato. Reimagining the blissful rush of having her chassis returned after her little potato-venture, however, countered the throbbing, aching sensation throughout GLaDOS' head.

"_Heat Sink Overdrive will engage in thirty seconds."_ The Announcer continued, cheerfully.

GLaDOS spared a moment to register the information, then returned to her musings. Something about it put her on edge, she couldn't shake the nagging thought and, internally, she could picture Chell frowning. The human would have agreed with her. Chell would _never_ entrust her life to a sudden, unheard-of equipment function whilst within the Aperture Science Enrichment Center. Aperture wasn't exactly kid-friendly, it wasn't even a wholly nonlethal environment for an adult with all their faculties about them.

There was just something _off_ about this 'overdrive' function. But what? Her cooling systems were a massively intricate formation of jackets throughout her chassis, which was filled with heat-conductive fluid. Those feeds led back up to the massive, spinning rings above her. The coolant flowed through hundreds of narrow, hollow fins within the shielded rings, airflow sapped the majority of the heat from the fluid, then it was pumped to a secondary system where the jackets were surrounded by chambers flooded with liquid nitrogen to supercool it for re-use in her chassis jackets. By rights, the very definition of an 'overdrive' simply meant all of this would work harder, faster and for longer to get her back to normal working temperatures.

She knew all of this, the details were as ingrained as the physics engine she used to construct Test Chambers. So, with that information tried and true, why was her imagination trying to change her mind? The nagging insistence made Chell's face stand out even clearer, the girl's background faded away and then there was just her in a black, depthless environment, her orange jumpsuit bright against the surrounding darkness, the white tank-top discolored with sweat and dirt, her boots secure on her feet and an ASHPD dangling comfortably from her right hand, like an extention of her very arm. Chell's slate-colored eyes bored into her, fierce, she was scowling about the so-called 'overdrive' feature.

"There's no need for concern, this must be a normal function of some sort. Even if I _haven't_ encountered it before. I was designed with every eventuality in mind." GLaDOS lectured herself softly, trying to make the image go away. "Well. Everything except a Dangerous, Mute Lunatic and a Moron interfering with my mainframe, that is." She added. The image of Chell responded to that, gaining a self-satisfied smirk. "Don't even think about it." GLaDOS warned her.

"_Heat Sink Overdrive engaging. Warning. Evacuate the Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System Core Access and Maintenance Chamber. Heat Sink Overdrive engaged."_ The Announcer declared happily, making GLaDOS open her optic and look around curiously. The only clue she had to go on was the simple logic that it had something to do with her. And -duh- it was unimaginatively named as an overdrive mode for her heat-sink rings and cooling systems. But she couldn't remember this _ever _happening before, nor could she find the program that was aparrently initiating this 'overdrive', so she made sure to keep her gaze fixed on the humming, spinning rings.

The first thing was that they sped up another degree. Quite boring. All that really achieved was to turn the huge, hollow chamber into a vertical wind-tunnel. It now sounded vaguely like a jet engine had been added to the décor.

Then her chassis itself was wrenched out of her control and she was forced to straighten out. GLaDOS blinked at the hatch immediately below her in confusion. Hanging in this position was an unnerving experience that reminded her forcefully of what Chell and the Moron had done, made her body limp and useless so the robotic arms could rip her away from her chassis.

"I wish I could forget that." GLaDOS sighed, forcing herself to put the thought aside for now. Having that in mind was not helping this situation in the least, it did nothing to keep her calm and her overloaded processors struggled with yet more information that was only making things worse.

As the memory left, however, she felt herself being pulled upwards. And her body was ramrod straight, too, not slack. Some part of this 'overdrive' program had locked all of her joints into place in this position. She could only blink, and she could only feel a disconnected whirring sensation as dozens of valves buzzed open all over her chassis. GLaDOS frowned her optic about that -more things she'd never known about herself. Were they air vents?

That was a truly stupid idea. Perhaps Wheatley had installed them while he'd been running the place. What the heck were air vents supposed to-

GLaDOS yelped aloud when she felt dozens of hoses on stiff extention arms click into place, matching up with the small vents that had opened a few seconds previously. It was like being pricked with a hundred needles all at once. Something between itchy and tickly.

"Now what's happening?" She wondered aloud, though her voice was drowned out by the noise of her heat sink rings. Hopefully, the Announcer would have something informative to say, something reassuring at least.

"_Heat Sink Overdrive online."_

"And here I thought the Moron was an idiot." GLaDOS muttered, rolling her optic in mild frustration. "They must have based his programming specifications off you-"

A jolt interrupted her, ran through her chassis and caused a ripple of pain throughout. She was still waiting for the little valves and hoses to do whatever they were going to do when something twisted her painfully around, forcing her to turn almost a full centimeter and warping the metal surfaces surrounding the multitude of valves.

Oh. That's why she was held still. Moving would break them.

A loud groaning of metal overcame the low-pitched jet-engine noise, making GLaDOS whimper audibly. This wasn't like the android form, she couldn't retreat from the body and wait for it to settle down. This was _her_. This was her own chassis that was hurting and making sounds that it just wasn't supposed to make.

Then the groaning and creaking -which had eased off for a few seconds- returned violently in the form of a huge piece of metal being flung at the wall panels. GLaDOS yelped in surprise when it hit the monitors arrayed there and caused a hail of sparks to rain down amongst a pile of debris. The shielding, which had been warped into a crumpled cylinder shape by the impact, rolled from on top of the smashed monitors and to a spot beneath her.

Recognition was instant. Though it currently resembled a tin can that had been stepped on, and the paint was interrupted by scratches all over the place, the writing was unmistakable. It was her name in massive, black print on a white background. The piece of shielding had been thrown from one of the heat sink rings above her.

"No. No. No. Nonononono-" Her mantra was cut off by metal shrieking this time, being literally torn into pieces. A good dozen chunks of her were thrown from above and into the walls all around, while at the same time, her chassis jerked sharply and all of the valve connections sent out a tiny creak of protest of their own.

"_Warning. Heat Sink Overdrive failure."_ The Announcer declared, his voice still impossibly and disgustingly cheerful about the news he was brought online to deliver.

GLaDOS deliberately resisted the temptation to construct an aptly insulting retort. Rectifying a serious hardware failure was more important than delivering clever one-liners, no matter how deserving the recipient. She ceased all of the virtual testing, shunting the processes offline whether it would corrupt the data or not to have done so without following proper shutdown protocols. The heat sink rings slowed, and soon enough she could hear herself panting audibly in relief. But her chassis only twitched when the servos, clearly meant to let her down to her usual position, tried to do their work. And it hurt. Why was it hurting so badly?

After a few more attempts, the servos burned themselves out and she was jammed in place. While she was _usually_ capable of viewing the room from this high up if she felt like it, GLaDOS had to fight back a small rush of panic. Chell wouldn't have panicked like this, would she? She was just a human, but she wouldn't have panicked, she would have grabbed the fear by the throat like a live thing and held it down, controlled it. Whether she had time to stand around and analyze her surroundings or had to think fast, she would have _controlled_ herself and controlled the situation.

So why couldn't a massively smarter, more powerful and entirely _superior_ lifeform control herself just as well, if not better?

The image of Chell returned forcefully, GLaDOS glared blankly in no particular direction whilst inwardly she glared at the human. Chell just stared coolly back at her, the embodiment of will, of instinct, very casually raising her ASHPD and passing her left hand over its' surface not unlike someone stroking a beloved pet or possession. She then placed her left hand under its' barrel, cradling it as her posture changed from casual to aggressive. Her shoulders dropped, she spread her feet a little further apart, she held the grubby, much-abused ASHPD as though it was a weapon and a limb all at once. She was the epitome of determination and sheer, indomitable will.

GLaDOS gasped suddenly and craned her head around, spotting her Mark 2 android safe beyond its' protective glass screen. Of course. A mobile form not restricted to one single room, a body with its' own limbs which could manipulate its' surroundings on just about any level of detail.

"I just finished building a perfectly good body capable of everything from hard labor to brain surgery, how did I forget about it?" She asked herself, annoyed. With her processors now idling, tackling the transfer of perspective from her chassis to the android was completed on a whim.

~!~

AN: Mwahahaha! -hides-

Shouts! :D

**Pandora(dot)Writing: **Hehehe :D Personally, I love writing fast-paced action, and fast-paced emotion, and I _definitely_ love to read it too. :) I'm seriously glad it all came about enjoyably! :D And... I'm pretty sure that's the "best chapter" so far in the story because I got a serious ton of help in contructing it properly and not posting a half-assed piece of s#!t. All going to plan, the rest of it will continue with equal quality! :D

**SilverFreedom: **Awa, here's another chapter! Dos't this appease thine impatience, mine FanFiction compatriot? :3

**AnAncientBard & Warriorfan335: **Whee, your entheusiasm feeds my muse, thank you! :D Now, I'm gonna go write some more chapters, hope you liked this one. :)


	10. Baby Steps: First You Must Walk

AN: **Vitalani:** Well... whew! Finally! I _finally_ managed to do this chapter! I must say, by far, this was the _hardest_ chaper in this entire story to write. Honestly. I've never had so much trouble with a chapter before. Well, I had a genuinely excellent beta and co-author on this one, at least! :D A lot of content, prompting and encouragement came from **exr**, so if you spare a minute to review, think of him too! ^_^

Wow, well I'm tired and I have an enormous assignment due for my HTML teacher. I'll let **exr** take over this AN... zzz...

**exr: **For me, the whole thing started in the second week of January this year as beta-reader. After three weeks, I was involved in creating the story, giving ideas, text snippets and advice on technical issues. Seeing the story evolve, discussing the plot line, and watch Vitalani make a several pages chapter out of some ideas, is awesome. Although this might look like a minor update, behind the scenes this was a lot of work. The amount of text sent around the world, via E-Mail or chat, is at least 20 times as much as the text which was finally posted. For this chapter alone, we discussed five different variants of its' plot line, had six interim-versions and chatted a lot to sort out some ideas and flesh out others. I hope all readers have as much joy with this story as I have had while helping to get it done. And if you appreciate what you read, please leave a comment in the reviews. It helps to know that people are reading this, and like it.

~!~

With the last command executed, there was a sensation not unlike the forced shutdowns she used to endure at the hands of her creators. Taking control of the first android body had been easier. Handling the Mark2 was consuming, almost suffocating. GLaDOS' vision flickered and then turned black, prompting a wave of panic that made her whimper and start pestering the transfer protocols to be allowed back into her chassis. Then, very suddenly her consciousness was bombarded with new information. Her subroutines then started to adapt themselves to the sheer amount of sensory feeds from the android, calibrating their filters properly, and her perception became stable. The panic began to ebb. The android's sensory feeds were now _her_ primary sensory feeds.

The artificial body remained on standby, while diagnostic reports flew through its' processors at near-blinding speed, causing the connection to lag and also a mild wave of dizziness. It did not fade until -a whole minute later- the diagnostic sweep was finished and the flow of information slowed to a manageable rate. Her attention shifted to the top-priority reports, GLaDOS personally scanned them for small flaws or inconsistencies that might have been overlooked by the lesser programs, nitpicking every miniscule detail to ensure everything was _perfect_.

Also, she had to confess, she was procrastinating. With the data from the android's senses came disturbing information that made her wish she'd skipped the addition of certain features. An acrid stench of burnt oil permeated the annexed room where the android was resting in its' support framework, reinforcing the disturbing images of spilled fluids and wreckage strewn about the main chamber. That wasn't helping the simmering nausea at all. Yet, while she continued to avoid the issue of getting to work, Chell's stern face faded into view amongst the consuming blackness once more, her hard grey eyes fixed on GLaDOS' own. The human's mouth was set in a thin line -procrastinating was frowned upon and GLaDOS should already be well aware of her opinion.

"I _know_." The AI muttered sullenly, her new face forming a pout as she gave in to the simple logic. She opened her eyes, exchanging the welcome darkness for the undesirable sight of wrecked metal shielding jammed against the protective glass screen that separated this small room from the main chamber. Power spread throughout the android body with an almost inaudible hum, her hands twitched and GLaDOS drew a deep breath of cool air into her heat-sink lungs, once more tasting sickly-sweet fumes on the air. She shunted the reminder aside, looking around the smaller room as she stood up, if only to avoid the reality of her destroyed chassis for a few minutes longer.

No debris had penetrated the glass wall. It was the same material used for the bulletproof screens in Test Chambers, and had held up well against the onslaught of unconventional projectiles. A few large cracks ran broadly across it, quite obviously the point of entry for the scorched-oil smell, but the room was otherwise impeccable. The shelf protruding from the wall to GLaDOS' immediate left remained in place as well, as did the selection of accessories laid upon it, and the large reel of cabling that connected her to the android was still mounted in a wall cavity behind a protective shield of its' own. Completely untouched.

New diagnostic reports began to surface as GLaDOS moved towards the bench, detailing vital information about all of her moving parts as they were put to work for the first time. She examined each and every one critically. Joints, ligaments, musculature, all were in fine working order, and the nanobot subsystem assigned the sole task of maintaining her mechaflesh 'skin' also reported everything as normal, to which she responded with a scathing demand to make sure things _stayed_ that way. The micro-program retreated to a dormant state, avoiding her attention as determinedly as she had been trying to avoid facing up to the creaking, stinking Core Access and Maintenance Chamber.

Haltingly -still looking for reasons not to enter the main chamber- GLaDOS dressed herself in the waiting garments on the bench. A black leotard with the Aperture logo stamped in large, white print over her left hip, a Test Subject Jumpsuit over the top because she had no intention of getting dirty, and also a pair of Long Fall Boots. Lastly, a specially-designed holster was strapped neatly around GLaDOS' waist and over her right shoulder in a lap-sash configuration. Her ASHPD was secured into it, the enclosed gripstock situated just level with her neck and the elongated prongs that pointed to either side reaching down, as though to encircle her waist.

Perhaps if Chell hadn't of wanted to _leave_ so badly, she might have got to make use of this innovative holster. GLaDOS smirked at that thought. It helped to lift her despairing mood a fraction, and she allowed herself a moment to imagine having Chell back for just _one_ more Testing Track... maybe even just _one_ Chamber. A long one. But just _one_...

Memories of Test Chambers past were dashed out of mind when Chell's scowling face abruptly flashed into view once more, making GLaDOS physically jump in fright. She opened her eyes again -when had they closed? Wait, did she care?- and glowered sulkily at the human, reaching out at the same time for the button that would open the protective glass wall. A scraping noise reached her ears, making GLaDOS wince as the transparent screen slid to the right.

It jammed. She jabbed the button twice more despite being well aware of the futility in the action. Predictably, nothing useful happened. The opening was exactly large enough to have stuck her arm through.

"Of course." GLaDOS bit out, reaching over her right shoulder for her ASHPD. It clicked free, giving a tell-tale whine as the trigger was pulled and a blue portal shot from between the prongs. The orb of energy flew through the small gap, smacked into the far wall of the main chamber and formed a calmly-swirling cerulean oval. After sending an orange one into the wall behind her, where it immediately opened the quantum tunnel, she secured the Device once more and made her way carefully to the passage and tentatively stepped through.

First impressions of herself were _not_ favorable. Smoke wisped in several places from her chassis, while the paint showed dark welts, giving away the locations of the enclosed cooling pipes very precisely. Part of the overdrive program seemed designed to withdraw her whole chassis into the cooling mechanism, locking it in several meters height out of her reach. The heat sink rings above had stopped turning completely and were in a very sorry state, tangled up with wires and all sorts of mangled mechanical junk pulled from the ceiling above them. More shielding than she'd expected was missing. It looked vaguely like someone had haphazardly run a giant potato peeler over the curved surfaces.

"Yes, that was definitely an _appropriate_ metaphor." GLaDOS hissed as a shiver raced through her, squeezing her eyes shut in the effort to put the thought out of mind. She tried picturing Chell instead, deliberately recalling all the finer details. Scuffs on her well-worn Long Fall Boots, the faint scar just below her left eye, a souvenir from their joint venture in the old Aperture Science facility. Chell's haphazardly-tied ponytail, and the pattern of callouses on her hands that matched up with the ASHPD when she held it ready.

Warily, GLaDOS opened her eyes to look around the eerie, quiet chamber once more. She turned her gaze up to the chandelier chassis high above. It creaked ominously. Slowly, though, GLaDOS worked her way towards it and then, once she was standing in the puddle of slick fluid beneath it, she stared upwards, trying to examine her Core's stained faceplate. The grimy liquids marring its' surfaces... they didn't look like anything she knew should have been within the construct's inner workings.

The machine above groaned quietly, threateningly, while GLaDOS knelt and dipped her fingertips in the puddle she was standing in. The fluid that clung to her synthetic skin when she pulled away was still warm, even though it had been there for several minutes already.

"Water, coolant, grease lubricant, transmission fluid..." She muttered aloud, examining the gritty goo. "Urgh. I blew a gasket, at least. Of all the things here, _I_ should have been built as infallible!"

Annoyed, she straightened up and closed her eyes, accessing panel-control protocols. Hydraulic systems in the room hummed loudly, causing the floor to rise up into a spiral ramp that reached up to her frozen chassis, which she paced slowly along after resuming full control of the android. The closer she got, the worse it looked. With the thick connection cable reeling itself out behind her from the smaller room -and mindful of what had happened to her cabling last time it had been run through a portal- GLaDOS came level with her Core and immediately put her hands to the faceplate, feeling under the edges for the sturdy clips that held it in place. They opened with a little effort, but then the faceplate came away.

Or, it should have. Despite a hard jerk the cover stuck, but a deep groan escaped the chassis's fixing, echoed through the structure as the sole response to the forceful movement. The faceplate metal was swollen with heat and she had to pry it off, but lost her grip when it suddenly relinquished it's hold, and with a loud clanging the heavy piece of metal sprang from GLaDOS' hand and clattered down to the floor. GLaDOS frowned at it before turning her attention back to her Core, trying to ignore the ongoing creaks and moans of overstrained equipment from above.

With the inner mechanics exposed, the damage looked even worse. The Core seemed naked and vulnerable somehow, just seeing it like that gave her the urge to grab the faceplate and shove it back on. She resisted. Unsettling as it was, this was necessary.

GLaDOS' fingertips eased in under the faceplate mounting, trailed over greased mechanics and brushed a few wires, then she found the coolant overflow valve and twisted it slightly. A jet of watery, greenish-brown liquid shot from the new opening, splattering her boots when it hit the floor panel.

"Well, that's the headache taken care of."

The valve replaced, GLaDOS withdrew her hand, trying to decide on the next course of action. Where else could there be blockages?

Retreating from the chassis, she walked down her impromptu ramp a few steps as a precaution, before she raised more panels to reach the chunkier upper-body portion of her chassis. Once the new panels had steadied themselves around the chassis, which was still stretched out straight above her Core, GLaDOS climbed up the ramp again, walked over to her own body and started looking for more blocked coolant valves.

"Two down."

GLaDOS' lips formed a self-satisfied smirk when she found a rubber cap and eased it off. In the past, she'd wondered why on Earth humans continually talked aloud to themselves when completing a Test Chamber, but currently the sound of her voice was helping to reaffirm her self-confidence. She was the greatest collection of knowledge and logical processing capability ever to exist, she could solve this little dilemma!

The release mechanism for the coolant jackets was stiff, and the chassis gave a squeak of complaint when she added a little more force to the small, resistant lever. It gave suddenly, squirting greasy muck everywhere that looked like mud.

"That's... That's the right location... That's not coolant..."

Curious, GLaDOS caught some on her fingertips and held them close to see better, ignoring the chassis swaying lightly beside her. The gunk was light-brown, not unlike chocolate milk, but it was slick and discolored her artificial skin easily. It was raw oil, not coolant.

Something touched her shoulder and GLaDOS looked up, distracted. A dangling cable, swinging gently from side to side. Slowly, GLaDOS' eyes followed it upwards, to the thrown shielding it was tangled in, just in time to see a broad piece slip loose. It slid a few inches, got caught in a tangle of cables that reminded her of a chaotic cobweb, came almost to a halt, but then the metal started to twist around the cables and slowly forced its way down.

At least five subroutines started to bombard her with frantic alarms, requesting immediate counter-action. Out of three proposals, GlaDOS rapidly picked out an evasive maneuver, acknowledged overcharging the android's musculature and approved the secondary warnings that double-checked her decision, as well as scrambling her auxiliary processor to try and calculate where the shielding would come down.

After a bare few microseconds the android body complied to her orders and went into a flurry of now automated self-preservation attempts. The rush of information seemed to filter through ridiculously slowly after that -GLaDOS actually registered very few of the actions, only managed to grasp the larger details. Her shoulders twisted, the right foot bore her entire weight as the body turned away from her chassis with inhuman speed. The android leaned down into a crouch and she could feel the charged leg muscles preparing for the jump, before GLaDOS was flung from the makeshift ramp, out of the hazard area. Body control was then reestablished as the preprocessed action ended.

But with a strangled yelp of surprise she was yanked backwards by her left arm, barely outside the danger zone, she glimpsed a single still image of the hanging cable caught around her wrist. GLaDOS was flicked on the end of it like a marionette, her legs swinging out and almost turning her completely upside down in the air. She gaped at the payload of unsteady wreckage above, watched it in a rising panic as it tumbled from its' perch. At the same moment, the cable broke with an ear-splitting bang, snapped by the debris on its way down. Her arm came free and GLaDOS' heavy, mechanical body gained speed again, pulled down by gravity without any further ado.

Falling a dozen meters to the level floor below, GLaDOS finally managed a sound -she shrieked in fright as the lot of it crashed down on her and thrashed under the rain of debris, which collided with everything in its' way -her chassis, her Core, the ramp, before seemingly making a concerted effort to bury the android. The chassis itself gave a plaintitive groan, dropping free of the burned-out servos under the assault. It smashed on the ramp and jerked to a halt, draped precariously on the raised panels. GLaDOS' vision jittered, turned to corrupted digital nonsense, went black and then returned.

From her Core.

"No, no, not good!" She exclaimed. Her Core lay on the edge of the ramp, its right side on the floor, all servos immobile. The facility uplink was dead. Neither the security cameras nor the central Aperture archive were accessible. In the edge of her sight, barely visible from her perspective, the android lay prone beneath a torn piece of metal that had sheared through the connective cabling and forced her sensory input to revert back to the chassis. "Ah, where's the pathway... radio uplink... wireless... a-and it's still untested... Oh, Science, _please work_..."

~!~

AN: **Vitalani:** *peeks over your shoulder* the review button's just there... *points* :P go on, you know you wanna ;)


	11. The Storm After the Calm

**AN:** Author has no excuses for why this story was on hiatus/accidentally abandoned. :( I know full well that it's been... Christ, _three_ fecking _years_ since the last update. I have only a minor grasp on why it's taken so long, why I seemed to have abandoned A Touch of Humanity. Dealing with my Bipolar Disorder isn't exactly a picnic, and I went completely off the rails over the last few years. I felt invincible, convinced myself I was 'cured' and no longer needed medication to manage my BPD, and promptly went off said meds.

Cue rapid slide into psychosis, volatile mood swings, paranoia, hypomania, lethargy and occasional bouts of binging on whatever caught my attention for longer than a couple of nanoseconds. Most powerful moment of hypomania: breaking the jaw of a blind-drunk jerk who smacked me on the arse for no apparent reason other than that I'm female and me wearing close-fitting jeans somehow equates to permission to be treated like meat fresh from the abattoir. Longest stretch of depressive mania: some 50 hours of staring blearily at my computer screen, without sleep, inspiration or adequate nourishment given the cramps in my body from holding that seated position and the knotty sensation of my stomach seemingly trying to digest _itself_. I know that I re-clocked Borderlands and Borderlands 2 in that time (my Siren toons are _so_ boss), and re-clocked Portal and Portal 2, but I only know I did this because the games have the hours and achievements recorded, and my pc's Task Manager registered over 50 hours of continuous use. I don't actually recall any of it.

That said, I highly recommend a site called 'Black Dog Institute' for anyone curious about BPD. There's some very accurate information to be found. Google it. If you're wondering why I don't describe any 'depressive' slumps, it's because I don't get them as powerfully as I do the mania. I'm more prone to mania, hypomania, hyperactivity, etc, etc. I get lethargy, yes, but only rarely do I get slugged with feelings of hopelessness, suicidal tendancies or raging fits of misery over seemingly nothing. I consider myself lucky in that respect.

Erm... I'm rambling about it. :( Sorry. Taking way too long to get you to the main point of this AN. Cue numerous facepalms.

**Main point of this AN:** I'm back! I'm slowly gaining control over my BPD and determined to keep it this way, and that means resurrecting A Touch of Humanity! Yay! Cheer! This chapter has, by rights, been fully written and post-ready since about a month after chapter 10 was posted, but as noted above, I was in a hardcore downwards spiral at the time and it hasn't seen the light of day until now. As of posting this, too, **exr** and I will be hard at work on chapter 12 once more, and I'm keen to see it posted in the best quality we're capable of, as soon as possible. I'll make no promises, but I'm _very_ sure it won't take as long as this chapter did to find its' way to your eager eyes, readers.

Shoutouts at the end of the chapter to as many reviews as I can cram in, as I've come to prefer doing. The chapter is pretty long for the sake of it, but given the enormous gap in time between my last update and this one, and the sheer volume of reviews, faves and alert notices which poured in over that time regardless, you're all worth it. But **-spoiler alert-** I kid you not, I cried when I read some of them. With joy, that is. I remembered why I love to write. Because I love pouring my passion into the world via the written word. Thank you. **-****Vitalani**

**And now, a short commentary from the one who deserves the most credit for this chapter ever taking shape: ****exr:** After I'd given up any hope for a continuation of ToH, after I let go of all ideas and emotions, let go of all the characters and great scenes I kept developing in mind for so long, Vitalani sent me a mail and said she was back and wanted to finish ToH. That was three days ago. Now I'm trying to regain and revive all those things, hoping to be able to get back to work and to come up with enough free time to help in creating the next chapters. There are great plans and turnabouts ahead. I'm really looking forward to the tasks ahead! -**exr**

Finally, on with the chapter!

**~!~**

"I swear, you aren't listening to me _at all_!" Emma exclaimed, steam practically whistling from the frustrated girl's ears. "I'm not saying Chell's a liar, I'm saying exactly the opposite of that, jeez!" She bit out.

Josh ground his teeth, resisting the temptation to join in the conversation. He kept his eyes locked rigidly on the road ahead, his right hand on the steering wheel, the left on his knee. Beside him, Sarah was all-but backwards in her seat, having twisted her upper body around to glare at Emma and more effectively argue with her.

A huff from Toby was the entirety of his input, having drawn the short straw and ended up beside the irate girl, while his twin had claimed the far-right seat in the back of the car early on and seemed to be having quite a bit of success in pretending he wasn't even there. That, or he actually _had_ drifted off in thought and missed everything that was said since they'd left the take-away shop with their lunch.

"She's not lying as far as the definition of the word is concerned." Emma continued after Sarah didn't manage to voice any new statements. "Because she doesn't _think_ she's lying!" Emma exclaimed triumphantly. "See, whatever really did happen to her must have been _so_ traumatic and _so_ horrible that she convinced herself all that stuff really happened. She couldn't live with it anymore. So her subconscious made up a fantasy story about talking robots and other assorted rubbish," -another noisy sigh from Toby caused Emma to raise her voice as if that would make her argument more convincing- "to protect her from any further damage. It's a classic act the brain takes in order to look after the sanity of the human in question. Chell believes she's telling us the truth."

In the silence that followed that statement, Sarah managed only to gape in bewilderment at the shorter girl, while Emma retained a wide-eyed, tight-lipped stare that just might have lasered a hole through the windscreen if it had been any fiercer.

"Oh... Okay, you made your point." Sarah finally replied.

"We got it the first time, already!" Toby whinged, stuck next to the glaring woman.

"But you're still not answering the question." Sarah continued seamlessly, drowning him out as if he wasn't there in the first place and earning a combination sob/groan from him in response. "What I asked you was _why_ you're dead-set on this? Why can't you believe what she said? Why does it _have_ to be a big, fantastic story? There's too many solid details, Emma."

"If she made it up," Toby put in before Emma could answer that, "then can you imagine what the heck she _really_ must have gone through? No way is there anything so terrible that she made _that_ story up to cover it. It's... Like Sarah said. Way too fantastic."

An audible growling noise seemed to escape Emma, preceding a very slow breath in that one might easily have pictured a harried mother collecting in order to deal with unruly children that refused to eat their greens.

"I never said she covered up something even more unbelievable." Emma ground out. "What I'm saying is that she personally finds this new story easier to deal with than whatever did happen. You can't _not_ question the fact that, if she really did have to go through all those... What were they? Test rooms? Anyway-"

"Chambers. Test Chambers." Theo corrected her, then made a face when he realised he'd just blown his cover.

"-thanks! Chambers. If she'd really had to do all those test chambers, then how come she isn't missing a limb or something? If there were bullets and goo and lasers that cut through concrete, why isn't she a disfigured cripple?" Emma exclaimed. "Plus, she said loads of other people died there too, how come she's the only one who got out alive? In near-perfect condition, I might add."

"Near-perfect? Have you not seen the scar on her hand?" Toby demanded heatedly. Emma visibly backed down, cowed by the reminder, and Sarah faced forwards again with something of a frustrated groan. Silence reigned for several long, awkward minutes, though Emma fidgeted occasionally, proof she was unable to let the issue rest. For the sake of their friendship, however, she was holding her tongue the best she could.

The University Residential campus came into sight, nestled amongst the greenery surrounding it at the far end of the misleadingly long road. Everyone inside the car glanced out to the right as they passed by the spot where they'd finally rounded Chell up that morning.

"Wouldn't it be awesome to run like that?" Toby commented absently, his tone hushed in awe. "I can't believe she was actually pacing the car, that's like something out of a movie!"

"I _wish_ I had seen that for myself." Sarah added, looking over her shoulder at him. He grinned widely.

"I reckon we could talk her into showing off. Or maybe she'd let someone try those boots on? I'm the same shoe-size as Chell is." Toby chuckled, eyes alight.

"Hey, you'd be about my height if I wore them, too." Sarah replied with a wink. "Ask her!" she insisted as the car pulled up and went silent, blindly reaching for her seatbelt, and she hurriedly climbed out.

"I'm so going to-"

"Are you seriously kidding me?!" Emma exploded suddenly. The steaming-hot parcels of food were shoved into Toby's lap, then she was out of the car and stomping down the gravel footpath to the girls' res house. The others stared after her in utter bewilderment.

"Em?" Sarah called warily. Emma didn't answer, stopping only because she'd reached the wire-screen door and hadn't yet managed to retrieve her keys from her handbag.

**~!~**

Chell opened her eyes, unsure at first as to why. The sunlight peeking through the curtains was warm and quite bright, and for a precious moment her mind enjoyed the peace and quiet. Then her memory returned, reminding her of the clash with Lexi and her pathetic attempt to explain all of her past to her friends.

She had considered telling Lexi before, of course. Visualised how it might go if she explained where she really came from. But even then, with a deliberate decision to reveal her past beforehand and the preparation this would have offered her, never had such an imagined discussion ended well. Too weird, too foreign, too fantastic were all the things that had happened to her. Sometimes she barely believed it herself, and if not for the scars and the Long Fall Boots, maybe she could have talked herself into the idea that it had all been some kind of hideous nightmare.

When she started to explain herself, she hadn't really thought anyone would believe her story. And from what she could tell, her assumptions were fairly accurate. The doubts in her friends' faces, the confusion in their eyes, the suppressed anger brought on by the suspicion she was spinning them a web of lies, all that wasn't nice to watch. But the openly shown compassion, their pitiful looks like seeing someone mentally ill and in desperate need of medical treatment, that really had hurt. The only thing she had been longing for was trust and loyalty. Even a hint of acceptance.

She had not spotted anything like that. And she wasn't sure if she could take any more of the skepticism and disbelief and shock.

The others would return any time now, Chell thought, her gaze drifting over to the clock on the wall. Almost half past one in the afternoon. So she'd finally gotten a little bit of sleep, despite her fruitless attempts all morning. Every time she'd closed her eyes, she'd seen the chambers and the deadly goo, and GLaDOS' glaring optic, scarlet with digital rage. All the things she tried to leave behind had caught up with her again. And for a moment she seriously considered running away, once more leaving her life behind, trying to escape her so-called friends like she'd escaped GlaDOS.

But where could she go? She'd fled from her life as test subject, going back to Aperture was not an option. This was her new life, with people she considered her friends. After leaving Aperture, after all the disappointments that came along as she wandered through a new and unknown world, she had finally found a place where she fit in. She didn't _want_ to abandon all that hard work to start over from nothing.

A sigh caught her attention and her grey eyes turned towards Lexi, the smaller girl still sleeping next to her. Her long auburn hair was spread over the back part of the sofa, dragged behind when Lexi had leaned over. Now she was resting her head on Chell's shoulder, locking the haunted girl in place.

Chell made her decision. She wouldn't go away, she wouldn't leave Lexi behind, not before she gave their friendship a chance. After all, she owed the brunette that much, regardless of their friends' reaction. And if anyone would accept her story in even the smallest way, then Lexi was that person.

Still in thought, Chell carded her fingers through Lexi's hair, mentally apologising yet again for striking the other girl. When she heard the brakes on Josh's car squeak, announcing the return of their friends, she lifted her gaze to the unopened front door.

Counting the seconds it took her friends to walk from the parking lot to the house, Chell composed herself, calming her mind in preparation for their arrival. At least they would bring food -delicious food- and maybe that would be enough of a distraction to grant her a little peace before a new wave of questions came hurtling her way. An audible groan echoing from her stomach reminded her about her early activities with just a small sandwich to fuel her body, except for the sole slice of bread she'd managed to force down for breakfast upon returning to the house. Thoughts of the take-out food they'd decided to splurge on made her mouth water and eased her tension. Her anxiety faded in the face of anticipation, and Chell squirmed excitedly when she heard footsteps and then jangling keys.

Emma stomped in, expression thunderous. That melted away to something unreadable when she looked over at the pair, while Chell managed to notice only that she was empty-handed. Then, without a word, Emma stormed up the hallway and vanished into her room, banging the door shut. The noise woke Lexi, who grumbled sleepily about the disturbance.

"The hell...?"

The others followed, arms laden with tasty-smelling packages. Lexi sat up, helped somewhat by Chell, as the much-anticipated food was deposited on the coffee table and the bags were opened up.

"Oh, good stuff." Lexi continued to mumble to herself, leaning forward to claim a share of their lunch. The others found seats and the meal was doled out in generous quantities, though for Chell, the silence - rather, the lack of conversation - was a little awkward.

"We did good?" Sarah asked at length, her smile thin. Chell gave a nod, while Lexi was too busy shoveling noodles into her mouth to respond.

"Great." Chell mumbled around her own mouthful. "I'm starved." She added, trying to prompt some conversation. Sure, talking wasn't her own favourite pastime, but the silence from the usually-chatty group was deafening.

"Are you really sure that this computer woman was all that bad?" Sarah blurted suddenly. "You mentioned that she saved you and let you go in the end."

Chell blinked, taken by surprise at the idea of GLaDOS being _friendly_. Of course, the last moments were quite... Out of character, at least... But considering the whole story... "Yes, she _is_ all that bad!" Chell finally got out. "I have no idea why she saved me in the end, really, but she tried to kill me often enough!" The raven girl added before falling silent, fighting off memories and images she wished she could forget, and feeling marginally resentful of her momentary desire for conversation. This was _not_ what she'd had in-mind.

"What do you think she gathered from all those experiments?" Toby interrupted her inner struggle. "You said you solved weird... puzzles of some sort. What was the point of them?"

"Honestly, I don't know. It could be... no, I've got no idea. Maybe how humans solve problems. There were chemicals in the air, adrenal vapour for instance, to keep the test subjects awake and vigorous. Maybe she tested drugs or... I don't know, really. She never mentioned or explained it." Chell's voice became faint, almost reduced to a mumble. "Does a lab rat know what the scientists are looking for while they run through tubes, searching for a piece of cheese?" She asked quietly, speaking more to herself. Her gaze was focused on her dish. She didn't dare to look at her friends, afraid of what she would see in their faces.

Silence flooded the room once more, drowning any noise and choking the conversation once again. Chell felt more and more uncomfortable, being stared at, exposed like a weird and rare exhibit. As before, this emotion was something she couldn't handle, something she had no idea how to deal with, how to shake it off or work through it.

In an aparrent attempt to revive the dying conversation again, Josh quietly cleared his throat.

"I'm still a bit confused with this 'portal' idea. Somehow you shot a gun at the wall, and then a bloody great hole just _appeared_? Wait, how's that different to firing a shotgun at the wall and making holes? Why's it gotta be a special gun?"

A smile came to Chell's lips, though her face was hidden behind her hair. She was grateful for his effort to keep up the conversation. Josh always had trouble understanding new concepts, but she liked to think he'd asked the question just to fill in the silence, not because he didn't understand. With some new confidence from his interest, she thought back at her first contact with the ASHPD and tried to think of a way to explain its function in a figurative way.

"The most important thing to understand is the basic concept of the ASHPD. Do you remember those cartoons where they paint black circles on the ground, then someone else steps on it and falls into it? It's a bit like that. But instead of making just endless holes where someone falls in, imagine there's got to be a tube connecting two holes, otherwise they're useless. The holes are different colours. One orange and one blue. You paint one circle with blue, then some other place you paint an orange one. Where the black circle in the cartoon became a hole, the orange and blue circle are like a door to walk through. You walk into the blue, and come out of the orange one, or vice versa. A portal. That's how it works. But that's just for starters. In the test chambers, you have to use it in so many different ways..."

Chell cut herself off, realising she was rambling a bit, and she glanced over at her friends. Sarah and Toby beamed at her in rapturous fascination, while Josh and Lexi's faces were creased in concentration, as if they were trying to play imagined cartoons with orange and blue circles. But Theo looked at her with a mix of impatience and annoyance. Her new confidence was shaken, but she managed to meet his gaze and hold it. He was about to say something when Emma arrived suddenly in their midst, stopping in front of Chell.

"I know you really think that all those things are real, that they actually happened. But you've gotta come to your senses, Chell!" Emma exclaimed. "I don't know _what_ happened to you, or _why_ you covered it all up with that tale. But you can trust us, and we'll listen to you! We understand if you don't want to get professional help, really, but you can tell us the truth. We'll listen, and we'll help you. Just telling us what happened will help you, it'll make you feel better. That's the first step towards coming to terms with your _real_ past. Sticking to those fibs won't do you any good! Please, at least consider it!"

Chell just gawked at her, eyes wide and mouth slack. Somehow, gravity had vanished during the last few seconds. Her body felt oddly weightless, somehow detached from her spinning mind. Then she felt rage, starting in her belly, a heavy pain as though her gut was full of molten rock. It spread outwards from that point, quickly flooding throughout her entire body like a searing flame. Her heartbeat became a strong thud in her throat, something she had to swallow hard to dislodge, and her lips pressed into a thin line as the rage contorted every muscle into a trembling knot. She glared at Emma, oblivious of the openly shown outrage in her grimace. Neither did she feel the pain in her hands, clenched tightly into fists so that her nails dug into the skin of her palms.

"How dare you! You arrogant bitch! Do you even think about what you're saying before words leave your mouth?" Lexi erupted before Chell could vent her own rage.

Suddenly, Chell could breathe. It was as though the raw fury coursing through her was being channelled through Lexi for release. Lexi was on her side, defending her, as fierce as any wildcat and as reliable as dawn and dusk. Cold air hissed its' way into Chell's lungs, soothing the burn of her furious migraine and leaving her head fractionally clearer with every breath.

"Just because you took some psychology classes, you assume you know everything? You think you can see into people's mind as if you're reading one of those damned textbooks?"

"Oh, come on, Alexis." Emma retorted, rolling her eyes up at the ceiling. "We all know that you two are like sisters, but I really thought you were smarter than that. How can you swallow the rubbish she keeps spouting?" The girl sneered, her voice dripping with sarcasm as she drawled Lexi's full-and-loathed first name. Theo stood up as Emma finished her tirade, clearing his throat noisily for attention.

"Guys, Emma does have a point. It's really too much. Maybe the story isn't _completely_ imagined. Maybe Chell was in some kind of... lab... or clinic. Granted, she's got those boots, and they can't have popped into existence from nowhere. But from all the things I've learned, a sophisticated and self-aware artificial intelligence simply isn't possible." The quiet young man stated to the room at large. "I don't doubt Chell lived through something incredibly stressful." He continued before he could be interrupted, one hand raised to halt any protest to his logic. "But there is no way an AI like the one Chell described could possibly exist. I'm more inclined to think that whoever ran or runs that place just used a fancy-looking machine, dressed it up with some plastic, added a few speakers and a microphone, and hid behind a curtain while they terrorised their _test subjects_. That's much more likely than building a computer capable of running an artificial mind, in order to play housekeeper in a facility like the one Chell described. Let alone the idea that this computer was small and efficient enough to fit into -and be powered by- a _potato_." Theo finished, even rolling his eyes at his closing point. The room was painfully silent for a few moments after his speech, and Theo started to gain an expression that displayed an undisguised level of self-satisfaction in his own percieved intellectual sueriority.

"Wait, just because _you _can't imagine that being real, how does that make Chell a nut-job?" Toby demanded, standing to meet his twin's challenge.

"It's not about what I can imagine, it's about what is possible and what not." Theo answered primly. "Maybe you've been running on sports courts for too long, so your brain finally suffered from oxygen-deprivation. But unlike _you_, I'm quite familiar with electronics, semi-conductors and programming. I'm about to get my degree in that. And it. Is. Not. Possible." Theo sneered, though somehow with grace compared to Emma's frantic blustering. "No matter how _cool_ you think it is. And I haven't even commented on this download-the-secretary-to-disk idea." He drawled, again rolling his eyes in a way that made Chell want to launch herself across the room and punch the expression off his face.

"Guys, please. This isn't getting us anywhere. Can we just step back for a minute and calm down before someone gets hurt... again?" Sarah intervened firmly, sparing a glance at Lexi. Faces set with anger and arms crossed over their chests, the occupants of the room merely glared at each other while their food was going cold.

"I didn't really expect anyone to believe my story. That's why I never told anyone about it. Not even Lexi." Chell finally spoke up, her voice quiet and strained from suppressing her rage. "It's hard to believe, and I know it. That's why I kept it to myself. If nothing else, I answered your questions today because I really thought you'd at least support me. Instead you're saying I'm brain-damaged." She went on with a sigh. "Believe it or not, you're not the first ones to blame me with that." Chell added, more to herself, hanging her head so the tears welling in her eyes wouldn't be visible to them.

"It is a lot to swallow. But I know I saw those boots in action, so I'll believe there's some truth in what Chell's told us. What more do you need?" Josh asked, looking straight at Theo and Emma, who had somehow migrated to stand closer together. Before Emma or Theo could answer, Toby threw in a comment.

"Maybe they'd need to take a swim in one of those acid pools..."

"That might be a bit much, but... how about searching the facility? If Chell's told the truth, then there should be some buildings, structures or an entry somewhere on the surface. We could drive there, take some pictures, and have a poke around. That'd be a nice trip and prove that the facility exists. Some pictures should even convince Theo and Emma." Sarah offered with a pointed glance at the pair.

"Lexi, didn't you say your uncle picked Chell up somewhere in the wild, wandering along the road? Maybe he still remembers where that was. That'd be a good place to start searching. You could call him!" Toby was instantly fond of Sarah's idea.

"I don't have to call him for that, I know where he..." Lexi cut him off, stopping herself when she noticed the stunned gape on Chell's face. "Wait, this is insane! What's to say that GlaDOS woman -machine, thing, whatever she is-"

"Are you afraid to find out it doesn't exist?" Theo interjected with a smug grin.

Chell glared. Her thoughts wrestled around in her head, muddled by the turmoil of anger, hurt and indignation crashing amongst her better judgement and rationality, and she rose stiffly to her feet.

"I'll _show_ you it exists, then." She snarled, very nearly spitting the words at him. Then, afraid she'd raise a hand yet again to her so-called 'friends', Chell turned on her heel and stalked from the room.

**~!~**

AN: Shoutouts... So many shoutouts, so many brilliant reviews, where to start? Ah, screw it! Most recent first -minimum headaches that way- working my way backwards, responding to each one individually. Ahead we forge! (someone please shoot me, I'm waxing lyrical O_O )

Also, I have imaginary plushies of GLaDOS, Top-Hat-Wheatley and Chibi-Chell floating around in my head, they _will_ be thrown in random directions! The squee makes me dizzy... :3

**nanadagreat:** Thank you, I'm trying! (so very trying! Haha)

**werd me:** Yep, sure is, but once you hit bottom you can only go up, right? Of course... She's gotta _hit_ bottom first... ;)

**TTP:** No! Not dead! Wait, come back! -wails plaintively- I has combustible plushie lemons!

**Shadowmanji:** Continuing! By all means, certainly continuing! Hope you didn't trip on my unintentional hiatus-cliffie, was only supposed to be a tease-cliffie! D:

**iammemyself:** I am certainly continuing! My knowledge of PC mechanics is average at best, tbh, most of the credit for that should go to **exr**. Fantastic beta, and a damn good friend. He really deserves it. That said, thank you _so much_ for your comments about my handling of GLaDOS' character, I was so scared I wouldn't do her justice! She's fun to write, but it's easy for my grasp of her to get out of hand. If she ended up OOC, well... It'd probably break my heart. Plushie GLaDOS at you!

**Aorta Heartless:** I had never intended to abandon this, I'm so sorry you were disappointed by the lack of continuation on my part. :( I have every intention of finishing this story, even if it drives me up the frickin' wall. I hate finding unfinished/abandoned stories too, so I will endeavour to see A Touch of Humanity to the end.

**shtoops:** Don't go! I'm stunned you consider this one of your faves, please stay! Um... Uh... -flails- Please?!

**AnimaDefensor:** Update at you!

**imnotraven16:** Thank you! :D

**Chozomechanic:** Thank you. :) I have every intention of finishing A Touch of Humanity, please bear with me! Else I'll sic a plushie chibi-Chell at you! Rawr?

**Guest:** Thank you, I'd forgotten how much I loved it when I originally began writing. Continuation impending!

**woodcutterw:** I'm glad you're enjoying it. Don't feel pressure to type super-long reviews, though! I certainly agree that typing on a tablet or phone is difficult. A Touch of Humanity was originally _born_ on my iPhone 4. I started drafting sections of chapters 1 and 2 in the 'notes' function, and after barely five minutes my hands would be cramped and aching, and I'd have to stop despite the plotbunnies ravaging the pastures of my brain. Also, there's only so long you can hide in the dunnies before your boss realises you're skiving off work instead of using them for their intended purpose... 0:-)

**Lollardo:** Yep, she sure did! It was fun to write, too, but as for GLaDOS swallowing her pride... -dangles plushie GLaDOS from marionette frame- these strings are pretty fun to tug on... I might hang on a bit longer... Hehehe... ;)

**AnAncientBard:** Plenty more to come, Don't go too far away! Please?

**GLaDHal:** Don't be scared, she'll be _just fine_... -evil smirk-

** :** Given that she's taking a leaf or two from the great book of Tenacity: Chell Edition, as well as your encouragement, she just might have a chance! I haven't decided yet... Muahahaha!

**Nargus:** Dost this chapter answer thine question? :P

**Basstyle1:** Update is served!

**Jennifer:** Glad you love it so far, hope this was worth waiting for.

**compa16:** Interesting? That's encouraging! Hope you were interested enough to read up to chapter 10, and this one, so you can read this shoutout. :) If you've got any constructive criticism to offer it'd be appreciated. There's always room for improvement, I say. :D

**Basstyle1:** So happy you consider this one of your top five faves. :D I got a lot of inspiration for GLaDOS' android forms from , partucularly an artist by the name of TwinklePowderySnow. Absolutely _nailed_ android!GLaDOS in my opinion. One piece, named 'Trinity', is my pick of the bunch. As for P-Body and ATLAS, I'm deliberately not including them because I want to focus on Chell and GLaDOS. Even Wheatley only gets a bit part, really. (it's this bit, where I fling plushie Top-Hat-Wheatley at you, raargh! :P ) I have no intentions of killing this story, however, I've just been on a (very)long and unintentional hiatus. Hope you like this chapter as much as you liked the rest. :)

**London Moniker:** Read and re-read your review multiple times, trying to appreciate as deeply as possible, and you brought tears to my eyes every time. Teh yaoiz aside (love 'em, love 'em, LOVE 'EM too! Currently shipping Borderlands 2 Jack/Axton like it's nobody's business...), however. I'm not a fan of romance in the Portal-verse either. It just doesn't sit right with me; the Portal-verse is an intense, psychologically demanding and occasionally twisted place. Squee mush and gooey lovey-dovey-ness feel out of place from my point of view. Though I'm not typically a fan of that anyway, I prefer raw emotion and blunt, no-holds-barred content. Re; the number of chapters: Brace yourself. There's plenty more to be had. I'm incredibly pleased to have impressed you so much! I had a lot of fun technobabbling, then surprisingly even more in trying to trim it down to a reasonable quantity so as not to lose sight of the chapter's pace and emotion. Speaking of emotions, I'm really glad I reached you with my writing. I pour a great deal of passion into what I write. As mentioned in earlier chapters, I _really_ do my best to put myself in the position of the characters when I'm writing them. Chell's PTSD was, for me, a no-brainer of sorts. There are going to be long-lasting effects of the hell GLaDOS put her through, end of (figurative)story. The concept of 'normal' might be overrated as far as I'm concerned, but still, 'normal' people don't suffer mental torment of that magnitude and simply bounce back as though they'd only stubbed a toe. GLaDOS tried to _kill_ her, for goodness' sake! Sure, the player can re-load a saved game if they screw things up, but someone confronted with their mortality on a minute-by-minute basis in real life can't. There are so many unknown variables, too: Portal has the player running, jumping and flinging themselves at incredible speeds, to incredible heights, under extreme conditions. What if Chell was afraid of heights? We don't know that, and forcibly overcoming a phobia under life-or-death circumstances will leave a mark on anyone, no matter how psychologically strong they might believe themselves to be. That's just one example, and I'm getting carried away. Hehe. I also wanted to note your mention of GLaDOS' 'inner Chell', as it were. A lot of the credit for that should go to **exr**, he had a big hand in making that possible. My original portrayal was clumsy, **exr** was responsible for the fine-tuning. Again, I'd like to thank you for the detail and effort you put into reviewing A Touch of Humanity. I take it to heart that you took the time out of your day (and your yaoi-hunting) to post such a review to my story, a story I never thought would exceed 8 chapters or 10k words, whichever came first. Think I might go read it again, actually, every syllable is pure inspiration. Thank you.


	12. Not-so-Imaginary Friend

**AN:** Hmm... Not much to say about this chapter, so I won't bother waffling! Enjoy! :D

~!~

Status reports flickered in her vision, then the view feed stabilised itself fractionally and there was a blurred image of the ramp from where she lay underneath it, almost unrecognisable thanks to the digital disturbance. GlaDOS shoved the reports away, throttled the data flow to a minimum to save bandwidth and started another diagnostic sweep. Anxiously, she waited for the results. The diagnosis seemed to last forever, which surely couldn't be a good sign.

She checked the time. Almost three minutes had passed when the reports she actually _wanted_ to read finally came to her. The android body had switched to standby mode when the connection was interrupted, so it was still fully operational, conserving its battery. Her joints, muscles and the android's skeletal structure were mostly unharmed, although they had been subjected to forces well above the operational limits she'd designed them for. Most other subroutines returned positive responses too, except for touch and visual. The nanobot system, assigned to the care of her flesh and skin, reported several minor injuries where debris had fallen on her, but it was already going to work. She could ignore that for now.

Addressing the damage to her visual input required considerably more attention. A small piece of metal had speared into her left eye and lodged itself there, rendering the optic unit completely useless. It was still powered, however, and a few sparks sputtered from it every few seconds. Forcefully reminded of the Mark 1 android's little meltdown, GLaDOS disabled the ruined optic, afraid that it would overload if left unchecked and cause even more damage. Her vision returned to normal, undisturbed, though she now lacked precise depth perception.

Finally satisfied the android was in good enough condition to attempt making proper use of, GLaDOS powered it up again and gingerly squeezed out from under the wreckage, then got to her feet and looked around the destroyed chamber. She gaped at her chassis, which seemed to have fallen as far as it could for now, then slowly reached up behind her head and touched the thick cable that connected to her android's spine. It was cut raggedly, sheared off so that it drooped limply beside the ASHPD clipped to her back. The secured input jack clicked free under her fingertips and GLaDOS tugged the ruined hardware away, staring at it in her hand. If there had been just a little more force behind the falling debris... It could have decapitated the android.

_That_ wasn't a 'hardware failure' she'd tested for. Nor even predicted.

Her gaze travelled slowly back to the chassis. It was a wreck, no doubt about it. Her beautiful, powerful chassis, her _real_ body, looked like she'd been jammed into a metal shredder. Without it to process the multitudes of data files needed for Manufacturing to get to work, there was no way she could ever build another android. The battered hulk lying in pieces before her was almost written off, and the one she curently controlled had already been smashed, bashed and crushed. She hadn't even spent half an hour in control of it. Suppose it _had_ been decapitated? Then she'd be stuck in her ruined chassis, unable to manufacture another android, unable to repair her chassis... Utterly helpless. How long could it possibly take for her to run out of power? The new turbines and the reprogrammed Power Plant computer would last at least a decade -that was already a small eternity to her- but how long would the backup chassis batteries and the residual power in her systems keep her running for? Twenty years? Thirty? Thirty _years_ stuck in one place, until true death due to power failure finally ended her?

A whimper escaped, loud in the near-silent chamber. Sure, being murdered was one thing, but to die like that? She hadn't even inflicted that on human test subjects. They'd been given a merciful, quick death! Fire, rockets, lasers, acid, neurotoxin! She'd never paralysed them and left them to starve, or suffocate!

Then Chell popped into her mind again, clearer than any video image. The woman might as well be standing right there, her steady gaze boring through GLaDOS' mind and her expression set into an unyielding frown of determination. The mute murderess would probably have figured out a way to escape even if she was a paraplegic, she would have hauled her impaired body around whether it wanted to cooperate or not.

And she would _still_ have managed to defeat a sociopathic supercomputer, a moronic AI and all the traps and tricks left behind by their deceased creators.

"It's... I know." GLaDOS blinked, speaking more to the image of Chell rather than herself, and she took a few tentative steps towards her chassis. But, what could she do? "Don't look at me like that, the last time I faced interruptions like this to my work was when _you_ and that _Moron_ ripped me out of there and he shoved me into a _potato_." She seethed at the silent Chell in her mind, turning her anger on the girl in order to stem the tsunami of helplessness welling up in her. It helped, her quickening breaths slowed and deepened again, but Chell's expression of frustration turned to bewilderment. If Chell had really been standing beside her, and if she hadn't been mute, perhaps she would have had a witty retort. Something appropriately dry and subtly insulting, not unlike GLaDOS' own caustic sarcasm. The woman certainly had the intellect for it. "I'm _thinking_." GLaDOS exclaimed, her glare unfocused.

Dragging her attention forcefully back to the task at hand, she shoved her desperation aside with a concerted effort and tried her best to analyse the situation logically, objectively. The damn cooling overdrive mechanism had laid waste to her Core chamber and ruined her chassis -her body- almost completely. The headache she had experienced before had been annoying, but she had not been able to find an explanation for that seemingly impossible event. Now that she could see exactly what happened to the cooling system, and what happened to herself because she'd neglected maintaining it, GLaDOS decidedly preferred the headache. The facility itself was about to fall apart, what with the idiot having taken over and made a mess of the place, and the stupid turbines failing, and now even her own chassis had let her down and become another statistic.

Her chassis was supposed to be reliable and long-lasting, it was built to withstand danger, violence and time. It had only managed to join the ever-growing cascade of disappointments and drawbacks, all waiting for her to work Science like magic despite every tool she intended to use turning out just as failure-prone.

Now, _now_, she was cut off from the facility archives completely. And unlike the android, there was no backup plan. There _was_ no wireless connection -GLaDOS _was_ the facility, it was her extended body, she wasn't _meant_ to be disconnected from it! There were no contingencies for this, no 'plan-B'! With the cooling system wasted, there was no way to do anything useful. Complex calculations, programming code, evaluating data to the nth degree and testing -all essentially torn from her grasp. Her processors would overheat in an instant if she tried it. Maybe even this comparitively simple analysis would be enough to melt her own Core if the android's processors weren't already handling it?

At least that would be a quick death, compared to waiting for her miniscule back-up battery to fail.

The panic was rising up again. Rearing its' head like some venemous predator.

"Okay, calm down, I know." GLaDOS mumbled quietly to Chell, fighting down the urge to scream in frustration. "I can do this. I know the situation is bad, so it won't help me to think of all things I can't do and don't have. I have to think of the things I _do_ have instead. Like..."

Once more forcing down the emotion that threatened to strangle her will, another whimper squeaked from her as she gave her chassis a despairing once-over. But there were positives. The head of her chassis, the part which contained her Personality Core, that was still working. That assured her control of the android. She could move about this chamber as much as she liked -but leaving it was probably a bad idea. The radio connection was experimental and there was no reliable data on its' signal range. Sure, she was aware of the _specifications_ of the wireless connection, but testing it was supposed to have come _after_ the testing on the android was completed. If the connection failed, she would lose the android and her last ray of hope to help herself, leaving her in a failing body, waiting for the final darkness. Just lying here, waiting for the end, helpless and pathetic...

"Nonononono. Stop, stop it, stop it. You _can_ do this." GLaDOS lectured herself. In the edge of her vision, she could see her no-nonsense Chell give an approving nod, and once more she climbed the ramp, approaching the collapsed chassis.  
>Scratched, dented and twisted, her formerly perfect body lay across several panels. It had slithered over the ramp, pushing her Core right to the very edge of the topmost panel. The heavy piece of shielding had hit the main section of the construct, where a huge dent was proof of the impact and the case was split open like a cracked watermelon. Scratches and furrows ran along the white-painted plates, the colour giving way to streaks of bare metal which shone under the glaring lights overhead. Cables were snapped, torn and broken. They lay across the chassis or hung loosely down the ramp like the tentacles of a mechanical sea-monster, but a few remained intact. Strained to their limit, they supported the entire weight of the precariously-balanced chassis and kept it in position. Though they looked ready to snap at any moment and send their precious cargo right to the floor.<p>

Her Core was the place to start, GLaDOS decided, tentatively laying a hand on the mess of garbage that had once been sleek, beautiful machinery. With the faceplate already removed, the Core itself looked tiny and fragile. Vulnerable. It was sad, really. Her chassis was meant to protect it, and the android had been built with similar specifications-

"Oh..."

GLaDOS' jaw dropped open as she realised, with painful suddenness, what the solution to this whole mess was. Her single working optic darted down to the currently-closed maintenance pit underfoot, and the very able mechanical arms it contained. Then back to her Core.

But before excitement could spur her into action, a memory jumped vividly to the forefront of her consciousness. The agony of being torn from her chassis, Wheatley replacing her... Then the crushing insignificance of being reduced to PotatOS...

Another whimper escaped as she looked down again. Could she really do this _to herself?_

The vision of Chell had already gained an unyeilding frown. There was no choice to be had.

"I... I can't..."

Chell's features tightened angrily. She had to do it. She _had_ to.

Swallowing hard with anxiety, GLaDOS drew a breath.

"Analyze Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System chassis functionality." She stated loudly. The Announcer responded immediately.

"_Chassis is non-functional. Significant repairs required."_ He chirped.

"Analyze possibility of Core transfer to replacement chassis."

"_Analysis complete. Transfer is viable. Replacement chassis required."_ The Announcer declared. GLaDOS' vocal functions siezed for a moment, and she inhaled deeply to try and overcome the momentary surge of anxiety.

"R-Replacement chassis available." The words came out weaker than she'd thought possible, but nonetheless, she was heard.

"_Present replacement chassis for transfer procedure."_

GLaDOS jumped aside when the panels covering the maintenance pit slid open, the mechanical arms within annoyingly pristine amongst the debris spread all over the Core chamber as they stretched upwards, the tools attached to their ends snapping and buzzing and clicking at her. When she didn't move they reached towards the android, and she darted away from them with a sob.

"I can't! I can't do it, Chell, I-"

"_Present replacement chassis for transfer procedure."_ The Announcer cut her off, and GLaDOS' words died in her throat. She bit at her lower lip to stem the tide of helplessness welling up in her once again, sinking to her knees on the floor, one hand pressed over the ruined optic in her left eye socket.

"I... I don't want to!" She wailed, flinging herself at the floor.

Something latched around her wrist and she squealed in fright, but there was no fighting the maintenance arms now that they'd got hold of her. They dragged the android towards the pit, several of them assigned to the job of catching each of her limbs and pinning her writhing form to the floor, while others rose up and hovered over her like vultures preparing to feast.

"No! No, stop it, please! Stop!"

Her cries went unheeded, and she barely registered the Announcer's next words.

"_Scanning replacement chassis. Genetic Lifeform and Disk Operating System prepared for shutdown and transfer procedure. Initiating."_

"Stop, please stop!" GLaDOS yowled. Another maintenance arm clamped onto the android's head, immobilizing her completely. "I changed my mind! I don't want to do the transfer, cancel operations!" GLaDOS screeched. "Cancel! Stop it, st-"

Her vocal processors went offline, followed an instant later by the rest of her sensory inputs, then she lost power entirely and everything _stopped._

~!~

**AN:** Shoutouts to reviewers! They really are appreciated, and of course, constructive criticism is always welcome! R&R!

**Guest:** Here you go. :)

**imnotraven16:** I'm glad you thought the previous chapter was excellent, I hope this one's just as good. Cookies!

**scourge728:** Well, hm, it does look that way, doesn't it? Then again, she's made a mistake or two lately, and as they say, "To err is human..." *evil snicker*

**Shadowmanji:** Aw :3 I'm glad to be back! :D Here's that next chapter for you, and cookies! :D

**werd me:** Guess it'd be embarrassing for her to almost literally be caught with her pants down, huh? I hope she's got a trick up her sleeve too!

So, R&R, please! I love reading them!


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